


Infidel

by Syls Darkplace (sylsdarkplace)



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Slavery, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Rape/Non-con Elements, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:12:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2274486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylsdarkplace/pseuds/Syls%20Darkplace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lt. Gen. Jared Padalecki finds himself the slave of a mysterious religious figure in an enemy citadel. His life and soul are on the line as he tries to understand what purpose he seems destined for at the hands of his captors.<br/>Also, I would like to thank my beta meus_venator. All mistakes are my own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains religious themes that may make some readers uncomfortable. It does not, however, endorse or condemn any particular religion nor are there any direct parallels to any actual religions in our world. I'd like to thank my betas meus_venator and anniespinkhouse. All errors are strictly my own.

Jared was aware first of the pain – a dull ache in his muscles and joints and throbbing in his head. It took him a moment to comprehend that he was bound upright to some kind of rack. Thick straps held his upper arms and wrists and ankles. He opened his eyes, blinking several times. The light was ice picks into his already aching head.

The room was nearly bare. His eyes scanned the stone floor, walls and ceiling. There was a small barred window near the ceiling, and a recessed light above the door. Everything about the room indicated he was inside the Verraat fortress. This was so not good.

His battalion had been encamped a few kilometers outside the Verraat city of Dehbrarah for almost a week enforcing an international embargo of non-essential goods. The Verraat had repeatedly ignored provisions of a 68-year-old treaty against export of banned cultural goods – obscene and blasphemous books, music, and art. While other countries supported the treaty, only Jared’s people, the Arramites were devout enough to send troops to enforce it.

He and his men had been on patrol nearly a kilometer outside the walls and over a rise of rock and sand when the Verraat battalion fell upon them seemingly from nowhere. He’d heard about the Verraat’s mysterious stealth attacks and chalked it up to lack of vigilance or pure incompetence. After all, how could men on horseback be silent or invisible? He’d been arrogant and fatally wrong, he realized the moment the first of his men fell.

The Verraat might ride horses like his own people had 200 years ago, but they had modern weapons – gamma rifles and pulse guns. While the Arramites, had become industrialized generations ago and their society had leapt ahead both in technology and population, the Verraat chose to pick and choose which technological advances to incorporate into their culture. They imported most of the modern technology they did use and exported only two things: Metals that they mined in their southern deserts, mostly with slave labor, and their godless immorality.

Few Arramites felt guilty for opposing the insidious spread of the Verraat culture or using military action to enforce treaties and trade policies that had been negotiated decades earlier. The Arramites were a god-fearing people who followed strict religious edicts that were enforced not only socially but by the state church, which along with the government and military, was headed by the Lord Protector. It was widely agreed that Our Lord’s directives did not apply to the silent infidels of Verraat.

Jared and his elite Chosen troops certainly had no qualms about upholding Our Lord’s laws and striking down those who would spread sin and godlessness. They’d done well against the Matriates and Pedracks in the north, but Jared’s troops had never done battle with the Verraats. They were unprepared and briefly immobilized by the sudden attack of the Verraat warriors. There was something strangely sinister about the silence of the robed figures on their pale mounts. They were clad head to boot in sand colored cloth. Only their eyes were visible.

There was no sound for a moment but the pounding of horses’ hooves and the electric snap of the guns. Then the screaming and shouting of his own men began. He was running toward his air-jeep, shouting orders, and then … nothing. He woke up a prisoner.

A naked prisoner, he now realized. He’d been wearing standard issue fatigues, but he wore nothing now – not so much as his dog tags. His legs were spread and bound at the ankle. He was only too aware of his vulnerability and a nearby wheeled cart covered in what looked like medical implements … a cloth covered tray, clamps, needles, swabs, some kind of electrical device … he quickly looked away as his heart sped up.

He struggled with the urge to fight against the restraints. He knew it would do no good and only tire him out when his strength and energy might be useful later. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out, pressed himself back against the rack as though he was holding himself in position and not the straps. He tried to imagine he was in control.

The door opened then and a robed figure stepped into the room. The door shut behind it with a solid thud. He couldn’t tell if the person was male or female. He knew enough about the Verraat to know that men and women dressed in the same concealing robes. He supposed it didn’t matter to them. They were said to copulate freely regardless of sex or social status. They lived in small groups based on vocation rather than family affiliation and the children were cared for by the group without concern for parentage.

They were by all accounts amoral, which only made sense since they were infidels having no gods to govern their behavior. He’d thought it strange that such wanton people would keep their bodies covered the way they did. He’d always associated nudity with sexuality, but his previous commander had explained that the robes enforced their equality. No one could appear better, more attractive, richer, stronger when swathed in meters of linen.

The robed figure went to the table and looked over its contents before turning toward him. Lowered eyes swept over his body, and he felt his nuts draw up as though trying to crawl into his body cavity. A slight tremble ran through him. The figure approached and looked up. It was significantly shorter, and Jared looked down into the most stunning green eyes – like Jhiracky emeralds with flecks of gold at the center fringed in thick lashes and outlined in kohl. A woman, he thought.

Gloved fingertips touched his cheek and then the fingers slid around the back of his neck, pulled him closer until their cheeks were separated by just pale cloth. There was a warm spicy scent from the woman. “You belong to me now,” a soft voice whispered.

The words were a punch in the gut. Jared had assumed he was a prisoner of war, but he’d heard that the Verraat took slaves. Is that what this woman was saying? He was her slave? She spoke Arramish, the tongue of Jared’s people and a language widely spoken in business and international negotiations.

The figure went to the cart then. She peeled off the kidskin gloves and pulled on a pair of latex ones. She then wheeled the cart closer. He watched as she tore open an alcohol swab packet and rubbed it over his right nipple. He could only imagine where this was going. He knew logically that protesting was useless, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“No, don’t.” He shook his head. “Please …”

“Hush!” The voice was no louder than before but so firm, it startled him into silence. There was no point in protesting anyway. His muscles trembled with the effects of adrenaline and the urge to fight.

She picked up a clamp then and moved toward his chest. He pushed his head back against the rack and shut his eyes. The pain in his right nipple was sharp, but nothing he couldn’t endure. He could only be surprised when it increased with the second clamp. Almost over, he thought. But no, he felt the first stab of the needle as it pierced the skin, burned its way through his flesh and punched out the other side. His entire body was tense, and he held his breath until the pressure of the clamps released. The entire right side of his chest throbbed with pain centered around a bright, harsh bite.

He huffed out a breath. “Oh God, you bitch.” Green eyes tilted up at him, and he saw the threat, bit back further insults. He shut his eyes and steeled himself as she picked up a new set of clamps. His left nipple was similarly clamped and skewered, and it hurt even more than the first – enough to elicit a groan that time. He wondered if he imagined a pleased look in those green eyes.

She opened the box on the table and took out a handheld wand that attached to a control panel within the box. The wand had a round, flat attachment on the end, and he realized what it was. He’s heard about the new electric branders, which had been developed by his own people to mark the hides of those breaking Our Lord’s law – fornicator, adulterers, thieves, murderers. They each had their own mark to bear. He’d also heard about the pain. He’d burnt his hand on a stove as a kid and knew from firsthand experience how badly burns could hurt. There was no doubt then that he was to be her slave – her mark burned into his hide.

“No,” he said. He couldn’t help himself. “No, no, no, please.”

“Shh!” Without hesitation the wand was pressed to his hip. The click of the controller being switched on was loud in the small room, and then there was a quiet sizzling sound and the stench of burning flesh. Jared bit his lip bloody trying to hold back a scream. The problem with these new electric branders was that they took longer, burned deeper into the flesh, but they left a more permanent brand. It was cleaner looking and less prone to infection. His body was rigid, fighting to get away from the device, but the rack was solid behind him. When the tool was removed, he slumped in the straps. He barely felt the fingertips that feathered over his stomach.

“Beautiful,” the woman whispered. Jared sobbed in a breath and a small glass vial was held beneath his nose. The world tipped sideways, and he was slipping into the darkness.

**: : : :**

Jared awoke into a strange, soft dream. The memories of pain and fear were just that – memories. There was no pain. His eyes flew open and he looked down the length of his body, but it hadn’t been a dream. He was lying on his back with his hands shackled above his head and his feet bound together. Silver rings pierced his nipples and lifting his head he could see a figure of some kind burned into the flesh of his hip. He let his head fall back onto the soft pillow. He wasn’t in pain anymore, so a medtool had been used to heal the piercings and brand. How thoughtful. If she had that kind of technology, why couldn’t she have anesthetized him too?

He looked around. He was in a high-ceilinged stone room. Sunlight entered through various shaped holes in the thick stone walls – a diamond, a star, a crescent moon. He was lying on a low bed covered in white linens. In the center of the room was a short, square table of dark, carved wood. It held a pitcher and goblets and a bowl of fruit and was surrounded by cushions. Against the wall, was a wooden cabinet with brass hardware, and richly colored tapestries hung on the walls.

It was silent as a tomb until the arched door swung open, and the woman entered. At least, he thought it was the same woman. It was hard to be sure until she knelt on the bed beside him, and he could see the familiar green eyes. She laid her hand flat on his belly, and his muscles twitched. The skin around her eyes crinkled.

“Why didn’t you just knock me out before you pierced and branded me?” he blurted out. He hadn’t meant to say it. Maybe the quiet was getting to him. He was used to the modern world – the constant sounds of traffic and VidComs and crowds. Even on patrol with his troops, they were constantly talking, roughhousing, listening to music, playing video games.

“You needed to know that I own you,” she whispered. He had to strain to hear her. “You have no agency here.” The hand moved possessively up his body. “I control your every move, thought, desire.” The hand moved down and fingers wrapped around his flaccid cock, gave it a gentle tug.

No, no, no, he thought. Don’t give her the satisfaction. If you don’t respond, it will spoil her fun. He tried to think of anything to fight arousal – his wife and children, the time his dog got hit by a car when he was eight, the sight of a young soldier with blood running out his ears, but his cock still responded to her ministrations. Her hand continued to move with expert strokes until precum was leaking from the slit.

She let go of his dick then and, lifting her robes, straddled him. The folds of the robe settled around them, and he could see no more of her than before. He resolutely stared at the ceiling willing it to crash down and crush them both. He hated the bitch that much right then. Much as he loved women and loved fucking his wife, creating life with her as God intended, the last thing he wanted was to be fucked by this infidel bitch.

Again, he noticed the spicy, almost peppery scent that came off her. He inhaled deeply and again as though he couldn’t get enough of it. Heavy lidded eyes observed him, and he looked away as the woman’s hands slid across his ribs. Fingers tugged at the silver rings in his nipples, and he was stunned by the electric sensations that shot through him and straight to his dick. He bit his lip and hissed in a breath. A quiet chuckle came from the robed figure that had an odd throaty quality. She reached under the robe then, grasped his erection and lined it up. The body above him sank down, and even as his cock was enveloped in slick, clutching heat, he felt the hard length and weighty sac of a man pressed against his belly.

He shouted and bucked up off the bed as much as he could. He struggled against his defilement already knowing it was too late. The edict of Our Lord declared that a man’s seed should only be spilled in the act of procreation, and for a man to cum within another man soiled not only his body but his soul. It was a mortal sin. He could never in good conscience lie with a woman again. This fucking, godless pig would soil him, take his manhood and twist it into a thing for his pleasure, turn him into his whore, his slave.

“No!” Jared screamed and a wad of sheet was stuffed into his mouth as the man continued to fuck himself on Jared’s cock. He tried to ignore the sensations running through his body. He couldn’t deny that he’d never felt anything as perfectly tight, silken, and hot around his cock. The man rode him with practiced movements – sometimes rising almost to the head and plunging back down, others using short, fast rolls of his hips. Both of his hands were planted on Jared’s chest, and he was panting when slick heat spilled onto Jared’s belly. He’d come just from riding Jared’s cock, and Jared was further sickened by the way this man took pleasure as a woman, as though he could create life inside his body like one. He moaned as he rode out his orgasm, but he wasn’t satisfied with just getting himself off. He clearly wanted Jared to come, to spill his seed inside him, because his movements barely faltered.

Jared thrashed his head back and forth and protested against the gag, but all that came out were sounds muffled deep in his throat. The thought of coming inside a man in a sick parody of the procreative act disgusted him, and yet he could feel the tension coiling low in his gut, his balls were heavy, drawing up. He hung there a moment between emotional horror and physical bliss before plunging into irrevocable sin, and it felt like heaven. His moan this time was one of pleasure as it rippled through his body like the heated tide of the Zari’an Sea. He was lost to it, carried along on the wave. He forgot his disgust and repulsion and humiliation and floated in warm erotic bliss.

That moment of ecstasy made his self-loathing all the sharper when he came back to himself. His cock slid free of the man’s body as he rose. The Verraatian gathered his robes so they wouldn’t trail in the semen on Jared’s belly as he lifted himself off the bed. Jared saw his legs and buttocks before the fabric fell around him. His skin was flawless but for a spattering of freckles, pale and almost hairless. A boy. He’d been fucked not by a man, but a teenage boy – who then straightened his robes and silently left the room.

Jared sobbed. Tears ran from the corners of his eyes and into his hair. He felt as though everything he had ever been – son, brother, student, soldier – had been torn from inside him. He was a bloody, gutless shell with no future but this – a body, a cock to fill some kid’s hole.

He wanted to escape, of course he did, even if only to thwart the sadistic little bastard who’d done this to him, but even if he did, what did it matter. There was no turning back time. You couldn’t unpick a rose or unbreak a vase. Some stains can never be removed; some soil was embedded too deep. The way he’d been used left a mark on his soul as bone deep as the one on his hip. He could fight it, had to, but in the end, this boy had him in a way that could not be undone.

The tears were gone leaving a dull headache behind when two robed figures entered. He was almost sure that these were women. They brought hot water and rags. They washed the evidence of his defilement away as he flushed with humiliation. When they’d finished washing and drying him, one took the wash water away, and the other went to the table and poured a goblet of water. She came back with a plate of cut fruit and cheese as well.

She sat beside him and put a plump pillow under his head. She held the goblet to his lips and let him drink. He hadn’t realized just how thirsty he was and didn’t stop until the vessel was empty. She then held a bite of cheese to his lips.

“Please, help me,” he said. She shook her head and pressed the food to his lips. He took it and chewed. She had dark, chocolate-brown eyes rimmed in brilliant peacock blue. They looked so calm, warm. He swallowed and said again, “Please.”

She tipped her head quizzically. “I don’t understand,” she said. Like with the boy, he had to strain to hear her. He had been told by an old soldier of the eerie quiet in Verraat cities. He was beginning to understand. He wondered how they managed to get things done without ever raising their voices above a whisper.

“Release me. I need to go home,” he whispered.

Her eyes widened. “But you are the lucky slave.”

“Lucky?” What the fuck, he thought.

She nodded. “Bed slave of the Vajha.”

He didn’t know the word. As far as he knew, the Verraatians didn’t have royalty, but the boy must be special in some way. So he was lucky, and they would think him ungrateful for wanting to be free.

The other woman came back then with a small lacquered case. She proceeded to take out brushes and paints. She lined his eyes with black kohl between his bites of food, and then used various metallic powders – copper and bronze and gold – on his eyelids. When he was done eating, the brown-eyed girl helped him brush his teeth and the other stained his lips a darker rose color. She packed up her little box of colors, the other picked up the dirty dishes, and they left without a word.

**: : : :**

Jared dreamed of his wife’s smile, her bright eyes, he’s just about to lean down and kiss the soft swell of her breasts where they rise above the low scoop of her top when the squeal of children draws his attention. Two little girls trailed by a boy are chasing a golden puppy across brilliant green grass. He laughs, squeezes the woman in his arms.

He was pulled from sleep by a sound he couldn’t identify. The room was dark. He was disoriented, not sure where he was, until he tried to move and couldn’t. All the memories came back then – the battle, the torture, the boy. He realized he could move his arms and legs a little more than earlier, but they’re still stiff and sore. He rolled partially onto his side.

There was a soft clink of metal, and a narrow bar of light escaped from a lamp – just enough to show the movement of a figure in the dark. It approached the bed, and there was a soft rustle of fabric. He could see the figure raise its arms as it removed its robes, which fell to the floor with a quiet swoosh. It was the boy. He knelt on the bed, and Jared remembered the spicy, woody scent that surrounded him from that first encounter – _You belong to me_ , whispered in his ear.

“No,” Jared pleaded in a whisper.

“Shh,” the boy shushed him, but not harshly as he had before, gently as though quieting a child. He stroked Jared’s hair and pressed his lips to Jared’s. He licked over the seam of Jared’s lips as though trying to get him to open his mouth to him. Jared felt tears well in his eyes. Not this too. He couldn’t let this boy make love to him as well. An involuntary sob allowed the boy’s tongue in. His hands held Jared’s head and his tongue occupied his mouth. Like a curious animal it explored – caressing his tongue, searching his cheeks, poking into his throat. He wished he could see the boy’s face, but all his eyes could discern were outlines and movement.

Jared’s body was rigid with tension, and when the boy broke the kiss, his hands stroked over Jared’s arms and sides, curved over his hips. His thumb lingered, rubbed over the raised brand he’d left on Jared’s skin. He sucked a nipple between his lips, and Jared hissed in a breath at the sensation as the boy’s tongue flicked at the ring that pierced it. He heard a click of metal on enamel. Jared’s cock was trying to swell despite the horror he felt at his body’s reaction.

“No, please,” he said. “I have a wife. I have children.”

Two fingers were thrust roughly into his mouth and pressed down on his tongue. He almost gagged and had to retaliate when the opportunity was there. He bit down. He tasted blood, and the boy’s other hand gripped his balls and squeezed. He saw sparks of light in the darkness and cried out. The fingers slipped from between his teeth and the palm of the hand went flat over his mouth, cutting off the cry. His balls were released and that arm went around his waist as the boy sucked on the other nipple and bit down. Pain shot through his flesh reminiscent of being pierced. Jared thrashed, but the kid held on. The bite turned into gentle sucking and licking again.

Jared breathed in and out through his nose. The boy’s gingery scent filled his head. He got it. Chained to the bed as he was, he couldn’t fight the boy. He let his body go limp and nodded. The hand moved from his mouth and played with one nipple as lips and tongue toyed with the other. His cock began to fatten again.

There was sudden shift of weight and almost imperceptible movement in the dark, and again like the little animal that had explored his mouth, the boy’s tongue was slicking up the underside of his cock. Jared gasped and arched against the restraints. A hand was pressed against his belly to hold him still and a thumb rubbed soothing circles there as the boy’s tongue flicked into the slit and teased the glans. Then the head was sucked into the hot, wet cave of the boy’s mouth and slid effortlessly into his throat. Jared groaned.

As awesome as it felt, Jared knew it was wrong. Amongst his people, it was a risky act. It was unacceptable for a man to spill his seed anywhere but into woman’s womb. While it was okay for a man to go down on a woman, even as foreplay there was the risk of man getting off during a blowjob. Jacking off was a whole other level of sin for which men were constantly doing penance.

There was no way what this boy was doing could lead to anything acceptable in Jared’s religion. This was a sin of inevitable proportion. This boy was damning him with every pleasurable motion. Despite his unwillingness, despite his guilt and remorse, his cock got harder, achier as the head popped in and out of the boy’s clutching throat, his tongue slithered along the thick vein. Jared’s balls were tightening.

“No, no, no, no, no,” he chanted under his breath. His body tried to curl in on itself as the orgasm hit. He couldn’t breathe, and his arms jerked on the restraints. The boy pushed his nose down into Jared’s course thatch of hair as his cocked pumped cum straight down his throat. Jared squirmed, shocked by the act and the sensation. The suction continued, as though the kid couldn’t get enough, until it was uncomfortable for Jared’s oversensitive dick, and a whine escaped his throat. The boy let the cock slip from his mouth and quickly crawled up the bed.

Before Jared realized what was happening, the kid shoved a thumb against the hinge of his jaw and the head of his cock into Jared’s mouth which was flooded with hot, bitter jizz. He choked and coughed. Just as quickly, the cock was replaced with the boy’s tongue. He sealed his mouth over Jared’s and sucked and licked his own release from Jared’s mouth. It slowly became a kiss. Jared just lay there passively letting the boy plunder his mouth.

He was too stunned, too horrified to react. But as the boy continued to kiss him, tears began to run from Jared’s eyes. The kid’s mouth moved along his chin, his jaw, over his cheeks, and he suddenly stopped. His tongue flicked out over Jared’s tear stained cheek.

“Why do you cry?” the quiet voice asked.

“You’ve damned me.”

There was a pause as though the boy was thinking. “Surely, your god would not hold you responsible for something over which you have no control.”

Jared can see the logic in that, but that’s not how it worked. “It felt good.”

“How could it not? He made you this way.” The boy slid down, slung an arm over Jared’s chest and put his head on his shoulder.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jared said. He wasn’t sure how much he should say to this cruel boy, but there was a horrible intimacy between them in the dark. “What happened earlier, when I spilled inside you … that was a mortal sin.”

“So you’re damned.”

“Yes.”

“So what we just did, it doesn’t matter. You were already damned?”

“Yes. No, it matters. There’s always a possibility of redemption, but one has to stop committing the act and repent,” Jared said.

“But you can’t stop. I won’t let you no matter how much you repent. How can that possibly be your sin?”

“I allowed myself to enjoy it.”

“You mean because you came?” There was a chuckle in the dark. “Is that what your priests teach you, that you can resist pleasure?”

Jared didn’t say anything. There was no arguing with this stubborn voice in the dark.

“Priests are fools.” The voice was far too bitter for one his age. “If there is a sin here, it is mine. I want you, and I shall have you. If it damns us both to hell then so be it, but I assure you it won’t. We are no more fettered by morals than a dog or a horse. You don’t see them worrying about these things, do you?”

Jared didn’t answer.

“Hmm?” the boy’s voice is soft in his ear.

“No, but …”

“No buts. I’ll accept your sins. Isn’t there some silly provision in your religion about that? One can take on punishment for another’s sins?

“Yes, but …”

“There then, I take on your sins. They’re mine anyway. Now, go to sleep, dahsa.”

Jared didn’t bother to argue. There was no point telling this boy that as an infidel, he couldn’t take on Jared’s sins. Only another believer could do that. It didn’t matter. The boy would do what he would do. Jared was only a slave after all. This heathen didn’t even believe in souls. Why should he be concerned with Jared’s?

**: : : :**

There was the sound of a soft cough from the end of the bed, but the boy was still pressed to his side. Jared’s eyes flew open, and in the soft morning light, he saw five robed people standing at the foot of the bed. His body tensed, and the boy moved then. He raised his head, and Jared had a brief glimpse of freckled skin in the corner of his eye before the intruders spoke.

“Look away,” one of the figures said.

“Do not look at the Vajha.”

“Close your eyes, slave.”

There was a quiet threat in the voices that made him slam his eyes shut. The boy propped himself up on an elbow and his hand stroked Jared’s belly.

“What are you doing in my chamber?” he asked.

“You are late,” a woman’s voice responded.

“We were concerned about you with this new slave,” a man said.

“Bullshit,” the boy said with as much vehemence as a whisper would hold. “You’re nosey. Now get the fuck out of here.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “Vajha-sah, this slave has a purpose …” the woman began to say, but the boy cut her off.

“You think I don’t know his purpose? Are you questioning my position?”

“No, Vajha-sah, no, of course not …” The statement trailed off as though she wanted to say more, but dare not.

“Then shut up and get out. I’ll join you momentarily.”

“As you wish, Vajha-sah.”

Jared heard the sound of feet and rustling cloth and then thud of the door shutting.

“Fools,” the boy said.

Jared wanted to ask him about the title the boy was called by, but he barely got the word halfway out when a hand slammed down over his mouth. “If you ever call me that, I’ll cut your tongue out. Do you understand?”

Jared nodded and the hand moved away. He licked his lips. “Is there something I should call you?”

“No.” The boy rolled off the bed, and a moment later said, “You may open your eyes.” He stood beside the bed shrouded in cloth. Just his green eyes were visible again.

Jared thought of the intruders’ words. “What is my purpose?”

The boy just stared at him a moment. “To do as I say in all things.”

Jared didn’t believe for a moment that was what the visitors had meant, but he wasn’t about to argue with the short tempered boy who let out a sigh then.

“Go back to sleep, dahsa. I’ll have someone bring you food in a while.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic contains religious themes that may make some readers uncomfortable. It does not, however, endorse or condemn any particular religion nor are there any direct parallels to any actual religions in our world.

That was the last day that Jared awoke before the boy. He didn’t know when the kid got up, but he was always gone when Jared woke up with the sunlight streaming in through the celestial shapes in the wall. That early the shafts of light would ripple over the heavy wood beams of the ceiling, but as the day wore on the bright shapes would slide down the opposite wall.

Jared, however, wouldn’t see that because he didn’t spend the day in the boy’s chamber. First, two guards would come in and unbolt his shackles from the bed. He’d be allowed to use the chamber pot and eat some sweetened rice or flat bread and fruit. He’d dress in a tunic that barely covered his junk and nothing more. He was surprised by how quickly the exposure to the eyes of others became uncomfortable. He understood then that the Verraatians felt safe in their relative anonymity whereas he felt vulnerable and undignified.

Then he’d be taken to a courtyard where he’d be bound to the handle of a mill wheel. He’d spend the morning walking in circles, powering the well pump for the laundries. Other slaves worked in the courtyard. Like him, they wore no robes, just short tunics and collars as he did, and at least two bore brands on their arms. While he pumped water, they would chop wood for the kitchen ovens or fix tack for the stables. Again, he didn’t understand the reason for the combination of high tech and primitive tools utilized by the Verraatians.

When the sun was high, he was led indoors through a large room set with long tables. In it he would see other slaves eating bowls of rice and beans. Jared wasn’t allowed to eat with them, however. He was led into a small room and his bowl would include vegetables and a bit of meat. He was grateful for it and could only assume it was because he belonged to someone important. Still, it wasn’t a lot of food for someone his size, and he knew his stomach would be growling by dinner time.

After he ate lunch, he would be taken into one of the wash rooms, and standing over a drain, he would be doused with water and given a bar of soap and cloth to wash. When he was done, he’d be sprayed down again like an animal.

After he was clean and dry, he’d be given a clean tunic and taken down darkened corridors deep within the citadel to a chamber that never failed to send shivers through him because laid out on the benches that lined the wall were instruments too much like the ones on the boy’s cart that first day. Shelves above those benches held jars and boxes of every description. Jared didn’t understand why with such modern weapons and brands, the Verraat’s medical office looked more like a torture chamber. He soon learned that this was not the Verraats’ doctor. He only doctored slaves. He also pierced, branded and tattooed them. It made him wonder why the Vajha had done his piercing and branding himself.

Whatever the reason, each afternoon, Jared would be led to Dok Shepp to be tattooed. He was a short, stocky man with dark hair and the accent of a Northern Islander.

“Well, you’re tall one, aren’t you?” the doctor said the first day. “Leave it to the Vajha to take on a giant. No disrespect intended, of course – take off the tunic and sit,” he said pointing at a low stool. “—to the Vajha, obviously. You’re just a slave, after all, yea?”

The doctor poured antiseptic onto a cloth and ran it over Jared’s shoulder blade. He flinched at the wet chill of it.

“Ah, don’t tell me you’re a delicate flower, you great baby. This isn’t going to hurt like that brand the boy put on you.”

Jared shook his head. “Why did he? I mean, isn’t that your job?” Jared glanced around the room again. There was an unconscious man lying not far away on a table. His cock and balls decorated with too many silver rings to count.

“He’d be doing this if he had the skill, wouldn’t he? You belong to him, and he’s a possessive little … Never mind, let’s get started.” The doctor seated himself on a stool behind Jared.

“How long will this take?” Jared asked.

“Take?” The man chuckled. “Days, weeks, maybe months. So get used to it. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other.” The sonicneedle began to buzz, but Jared didn’t flinch as it touched his skin. He felt like he was in a dream. Sometimes nothing seemed real anymore.

The pattern began on his right shoulder blade with the twisted branches of a keerwa tree inked in black and a few red blossoms clung to it. Petals blew away and over his shoulder where they morphed into red-winged black birds in flight over wispy clouds that scudded over a red crescent moon, and on and on as the days wore by the illustration transformed – a pale hand held a dagger dripping with blood, a pyre burned in a vaulted chamber, robed figures knelt before a bloody altar – and it was all in delicate black lines accented with red – all but one. He had to look into the mirror in the Vajha’s chamber to see it on his left shoulder – a green eye peered out from folds of cloth. It was startling in its likeness to the boy. It was as though a part of the boy was there living inside him – from the lush lashes to the golden flecks of the iris – it was him. Jared couldn’t resist looking at it when left alone in the room despite feelings of unease it caused and the quiver in his gut.

When Dok Shepp was finished inking each day, he would use the medtool to accelerate the healing of Jared’s skin, and by morning he would be able to get back in the stocks and turn the water wheel. Upon being returned to the boy’s chamber, the guards, with their robes cinched with a weapons belt and crossed with bandoliers, would wait while Jared removed his tunic, and they would once again shackle him to the bed. At first it was humiliating having other men shackle him to the bed of boy. They knew of course what he was, what he was used for, but they made no indication that they thought anything of it. They had no more reaction to it than they did taking him to the courtyard or lunch or the doctor or the privy. Eventually, he lost any feeling about it either.

The chains from the bed to his shackles were longer than they had been in the beginning, and eventually he was cuffed just by his right wrist. He thought he could probably choke the life out of the boy with the chain, but what would that accomplish? There were times though that it was difficult to stop himself. Surely, it would earn him a short, violent death, but that might be better than this life. Still, he held on to some hope of freedom.

When the guards left, the women would come in. They’d feed him and paint his face for the boy. He found their quiet ministrations soothing.

When the boy returned to his chamber in the evenings, he would have Jared kneel so he could look at the progress of the tattoo. He would run his fingers lightly over embossed quality of the fresh tattoo, and Jared’s skin would tingle and seem to heat up under the feather weight of the boy’s fingertips. The day that the green eye appeared, the Vajha dropped to his knees behind Jared with his fingers pressed just below it and stared for the longest time. It seemed to distress him, and he was out of sorts all evening.

That night in the dark, the boy had taken Jared’s hands and wrapped his fingers around the headboard. “Don’t let go,” he’d said with dark fierceness, and then he’d crushed their mouths together, sucking and biting Jared’s lips until they stung. He moved down his neck and sucked at the skin until it burned. His fingers dug painfully into Jared ribs and then hips as he continued moving lower. He bit Jared’s nipples, tugged at the piercings. He didn’t stop till Jared whined and the cruel mouth continued downward.

Pain bloomed everywhere the boy’s fingers and mouth touched. The quiet noises coming from his throat were more those of injured animal than of passion. Jared squirmed as he approached his groin. Jared cried out when the boy pushed his legs apart and bit the inside of his thigh with a growl. He nuzzled into the crease between his leg and balls. Jared trembled.

“Please,” Jared begged.

The boy sucked one of his balls into his mouth, tugged just this side of painful. Jared writhed under the kid’s hard grip. He let one nut slide from his tongue and sucked in the other. Jared moaned. His cock was hard and leaking. He didn’t understand his responses to the boy – or maybe he did. His body did. It knew that there would be pleasure in the end. His mind couldn’t fight as much as he tried to will it to.

The boy released the testicle and laved over his sac. He pulled Jared’s legs apart and up before licking a stripe up his crack. Jared gasped. The slick muscle circled Jared’s anus and then pressed in. The boy had never done that before. If nothing else, Jared had begun to feel secure that the kid didn’t want to penetrate him, and this … it felt incredible. Yes, it was an intrusion, but it was a slick, smooth fullness. His muscles relaxed as the boy lapped at his insides. Jared couldn’t help but marvel that the most important person in the citadel was licking his asshole. He felt their roles had been reversed, and master was slave.

So lost in pleasure was he and relaxed were his muscles that he barely noticed when a finger slid into him. It crooked up and began to massage a spot that made his balls feel heavy and tight. The tongue slid out of him, but the finger remained, and the boy took the head of his cock into his mouth. His grasped the shaft and stroked once as he applied more pressure to that spot inside Jared, and the climax hit like a hot, blinding sandstorm. He nearly doubled up before falling back onto the mattress. His toes curled and his hands fisted the sheets.

The boy crawled up his body and clung to him. He pressed his hard leaking cock against the brand on Jared’s hip and rubbed his length against it. With what sounded like a sob, he came spilling his release between them. For the first time, Jared wrapped his free arm around the boy and held him. The kid pressed his face into the curve of Jared’s neck and wept as though his heart was breaking. Jared wondered who this boy was that caused him such pain and gave him such pleasure, and why now he was showing what Jared didn’t know – remorse or sadness or some inexplicable grief.

It wasn’t something that he’d fully accepted, but he was reconciled to his damnation. There was nothing he could do about it – especially not as long as he was a captive of the Verraat. He had not completely given up hope of escape, but he had to be realistic about what he would do if he did. He knew that he could never go back to the military or his family. The only place that would take him in was one of the monasteries that allowed men like him to show contrition and redeem themselves through silence, work and prayer. It wouldn’t be so different than where he was except for the seeking hands and wet mouth and tight heat in the darkness. That he would miss those things, this boy, showed just how far he was from redemption.

Jared wasn’t sure how long it had been since his capture, but it was long enough that his military hair cut had grown down over his ears, and the tattoo was beginning to trail down his side to his hip. He was becoming alternately impassive and restive. So it was in a moment of blind self-preservation, when his overseer in the courtyard was distracted and left him untethered, that Jared broke for it. He was almost to the gate leading into the city, when three guards fell upon him. He was dragged back to the pillory and his cuffs secured to it. The tunic was torn from his back, and the overseer laid into him with the flogger. The crack of leather hitting his skin was loud in the quiet stone enclosure as everyone, slaves and freemen alike, stopped whatever they were doing to watch. The overseer swore his rage quietly under his breath. The only other sound was his harsh breathing as the flogger burned across Jared’s lower back.

Suddenly, there was a grunt and the overseer was thrown to the ground beside Jared. One arm was twisted under him, and he threw his other up to protect himself, but it didn’t prevent the flogger from ripping bloody stripes across his cheek. Jared twisted around to see the robed figure holding the flogger, and his gaze met green eyes that blazed with rage. The overseer took the opportunity to scrambled to his feet and stagger away. The boy dropped the flogger and picked up a piece of cord wood from the pile against the wall. Within four long strides, he’d caught up with the overseer, raised the piece of wood and swung it at the man’s head like a battle ax. Without another sound, the overseer fell on his face in the dirt.

The Vajha stared at the man lying at his feet for a moment and turned. His gaze swept over the silent people gathered there. “No one punishes my slave but me,” he said. He walked to the pillory and released Jared’s cuffs from it. Unclipping them, he pulled Jared’s hands behind his back and reattached them. His lower back was sticky with blood from the flogging. “Follow me,” the boy said and walked away. Jared didn’t hesitate to obey. He couldn’t help looking at the overseer who lay unmoving on the ground with his blood soaking into the dirt.

He was led into the washroom and made to kneel. The Vajha himself poured water over Jared’s naked body, and it ran red with his blood. His back burned, and he wished Dok Shepp was there with the medtool to heal him. There was something surreal about being bathed by this boy who was so important that he could murder a freeman in front of a crowd with impunity. That vicious boy was washing his hair and tending his wounds.

Jared kept his eyes lowered and drew deep breathes to deal with the pain, watching as the hem of the Vajha’s robes turned pink as it soaked up bloody water. The boy paused in front of him. He tipped Jared’s face up and bent over him, pressed their mouths together despite the layer of linen between them. In all this time, he’d never seen more of his face than those green eyes which were darkly possessive. Through the thin fabric, he felt the boy’s lips part and his tongue dart out, push at the cloth. Jared’s cock twitched in response.

The Vajha pulled his face back a few inches. “Remember what I told you: Do as I say in all things.”

The door creaked open then and five robed figures tried to push through it at once and began babbling in hushed voices.

“Vajha-sah …” said a man.

“We were concerned,” a woman said.

“An overseer was killed.”

“Your safety is paramount.”

“You should be in your chamber.”

“Silence!” the boy said in a normal tone of voice that made the quintet of fools jump as though he’d shouted.

The five froze and shifted backward as one.

“I killed the overseer,” he said. “So you see there’s no need for concern. You may go.”

“But, Vajha-sah, we will find a washer for your slave,” one ventured.

“You will not,” he said crossly. “It is my slave, and I am tired of it being used and apparently abused at the whim of others. If I wish to see to my slave that is my will. Who here questions my will?”

“Not I, Vajha-sah.”

“No, nor I.”

“No one here, Vajha-sah would have the impudence.”

The Vajha huffed out a breath. “Impudence. It is impudence and stupidity to use that word with me. Now get the fuck out.”

The group of five stumbled backward, jostling one another, and stepping on each other’s robes. The door was pulled shut by a slave, and Jared was again alone with the boy.

“Fools,” the kid said. He turned to Jared. “Can you rise?”

Jared nodded but wasn’t really sure. The boy put a hand under his elbow to steady him as he got to his feet.

“Come. Let’s take you down to the infirmary, and have Dok fix you up.”

**: : : :**

Jared awoke and was immediately aware that he had an erection. There was nothing unusual about it. Men woke up with erections all the time, and it had nothing to do with the warm body he was curled around or the cleft of ass it was pressed against. He was about to roll away, when a hand gripped his hip and pulled him even closer. The boy rolled his hips, and Jared’s cock slid along the now familiar crease of flesh. He sucked in a breath and his own hips bucked involuntarily in response.

The boy pulled away a little, and his hand slid between them. He stroked Jared’s cock, until it was leaking and slick with precum. He lined up the head with his hole and grasping Jared’s hip again, pressed him forward. This was new. The boy was urging Jared to fuck him, and Jared complied. He pushed into the crushing heat of the boy’s body, feeling new measure of control. He gripped the boy’s hip, and their arms crossed, they clutched each other.

Jared didn’t think of how he would feel about this in the light because here in the nearly silent darkness, nothing counted. There was just the joining of their bodies – skin and heat and pleasure. He would think tomorrow of how the boy was dragging him further into sin, making him complicit in this degradation and deviance. But for now he fucked into a hole that was slicked with his own cum from hours ago, and it made him feel as though the body he was holding belonged to him. The intimacy of this darkness that used to seem horrific had become familiar, more than physical. He knew that was wrong and dangerous, but it didn’t stop his hand from sliding around the boy’s waist, across his belly, and grasping his cock.

The boy gasped and arched back against Jared’s body. Jared had never touched another man that way. It was familiar and strange, and his strokes matched the slow, long drags of his cock in the boy’s channel. Jared could feel his climax building within him, and the kid was making quiet sounds that were little more than puffs of breath. Suddenly, the fevered cock in his hand hardened even more, and the boy’s muscles clenched around Jared’s dick. Cum spilled over his hand, and Jared pushed deep into the boy’s body as he came.

The boy owned him, had branded him with his mark and used Jared’s body for his pleasure, but this – pumping his seed deep into the boy’s body – was a kind of claiming. Much as Jared wanted to reject the idea, it was like taking something back from the kid or at least mitigating what had been taken from him. He turned over the idea in his head of what it would be like to place a mark of ownership on the boy. He wondered if that would make them even, but he knew it wouldn’t. This boy had never objected to this. He’d wanted it. He wasn’t concerned that his soul was in jeopardy.

He was a heathen, and part of Jared pitied him. He didn’t know the love of God. He couldn’t repent of something that he’d never been taught to believe in. A part of Jared wanted to give the Verraat the opportunity to know of God’s love and accept him into their hearts and lives, but the Church was right, they were a cancer on the world. They were a corrupting influence on Godly people and had to be destroyed like a cancer.

Jared couldn’t deny it. He was the perfect example. Those were the things he would think in the light of day, but lying there holding the boy, his cock still buried in his body, he thought of nothing. He floated on a warm current of pleasure. His limbs were heavy, and he breathed in the warm, spicy, soothing scent. The boy’s hand stroked Jared’s hip and thigh. He sank into sleep.

**: : : :**

She was so beautiful – small and slender with dark hair and eyes and a bright smile. He’d known the first time he met her that somehow he’d convince the priests to let him take her as his wife. It had taken two years and proof of her virginity before they’d said their vows before God and the Lord Protector.

That first night she’d grimaced in pain as he pushed into her. She was so small, and tears came to his eyes, but she kept saying it was all right, it was her lot in life. But it wasn’t all right. He didn’t want to hurt her. They’d both known it would. It was supposed to. It was how God intended. Man had to break the soil to plant the seed.

There had been no pleasure in their coupling for her, not for some time. Once it stopped causing her pain, he could find some pleasure but was frustrated by his inability to give her any. It wasn’t until he began using his mouth that she reached orgasm. While the Church frowned on this act, even amongst spouses, there was no scripture to support that it was a sin. He loved her and it was just between them, so let the Church frown. His heart ached with happiness when she moaned and shook with pleasure.

In his dream, her slim body is awash in the pale moonlight which reveals the rounded swell of her belly. Her breasts are already becoming heavy with milk, and her nipples are large and dark. She stretches and smiles shyly, his woman, his wife. The skin of her thighs is smooth and soft under his calloused fingers. One hand goes to her mound, course hair brushes his palm, and a finger slides into her slick, wet slit. Her lips part, and she pushes her pussy up against his hand.

Then the moonlight catches in her eyes of bright emerald flecked with gold, but no, that isn’t right, and beneath his hand the flesh is hard. He sees stretched out on the bed, not a woman, not his wife, but a boy, pale and freckled. He reaches out …

Jared awoke with a start as a wet cloth slid over his lower belly and sac, up over his hard cock. It was the woman with the bright blue eyeliner. She paid him no mind and continued with her task. He felt his face flush, and he slid up into a sitting position. She sat with the washcloth raised and tipped her head quizzically.

Jared cleared his throat and looked away. He felt stupid under the woman’s gaze. She didn’t understand his embarrassment. He was nothing more than a livestock to her or maybe a pet.

“Tell me something,” he said. “Would you? What does dahsa mean?”

Her eyes crinkled into a smile. “It is hard to … there’s no word. It is _my pleasure_ , like, umm, lover,” she whispered. She dropped the cloth into the wash bowl and carried it to the table.

“That’s what it means – lover?”

She brought him a plate of sweet buns, fruit, and cheese and a tall glass of iced coffee. She nodded. “The Vajha must be pleased with you to call you such.”

“Have there been others before me?” he asked. He knew what the answer must be. The boy was far too practiced for there to not have been.

But she shook her head. “No,” she said, “he chose you.” With that she picked up her wash bowl and left the room.

He took a drink of the iced coffee and savored the rich creamy slightly sweet chill of it. It was one of the few things that was familiar. A taste from home. His wife would make it for him in the morning when he was there between tours of duty. The dream came back to him then, and his eyes stung. She was slipping away from him. Even his memories of her were being usurped by haunting green eyes. The last threads of hope were becoming finer and slipping through his fingers. He’d thought the boy’s ownership of him had just been physical, but he saw that wasn’t true. He was in Jared’s head, in his dreams.

Jared bit into a sticky bun savoring the sweet, delicate confection. They didn’t have anything like this back home. The best he could hope for there was fruit bread. Physical pleasures, whether sexual or culinary, were suspect. He thought of what he’d done in the dark, the way he’d thrust into the boy’s channel and touched his cock. How possessive he’d felt as he spilled his seed into kid’s body.

He set the bun on the plate. He was becoming a slave, not to the boy, but to pleasure itself. This is what the Lord Protector warned of. A man must be on guard at all times to sins of the flesh. Pleasure seduces and enslaves. It had only been Jared’s superior record and devotion that had encouraged the Lord Protector to allow him to marry. Most Warriors of God were required to remain celibate and many showed their unworthiness to marry by failing to do so.

**: : : :**

Jared had knelt in prayer beside the bed for much of the day. It had been so long, he had fallen so far from grace that it felt as if daggers were being thrust into his knees, and his back was on fire. Still, he knelt and begged the Lord for strength. When the boy entered and indicated with a gesture that Jared should get onto the bed, Jared balked. The boy grabbed the collar around his neck and yanked on it. There was ice in his eyes, and Jared tried to twist away. The collar tightened, and the boy pulled him from his knees and shoved him onto the bed. Jared rolled away.

“No,” he said.

The boy stood stock still. His eyes burned with green fire. “How dare you,” he said. He turned and went to the tall cabinet, took a flogger from it, and came back to the bed. It hung from his hand like a menacing snake. Unlike the one the overseer had used, this one had small metal tips that would slice him open. “I protected you.” He raised his arm and brought the leather down across Jared’s belly, laying the skin open in red slashes. “And pampered you.” Jared instinctively rolled to protect his genitals and stomach. This time the lashes fell across the back of his thighs. “I gave you my body, you ungrateful dog.” The flogger fell again across his ass cheeks.

The boy’s weight came down on the bed, and a hand roughly shoved Jared onto his back. “This is how you repay me? With rejection? Me, the Vajha, say it, _Vajha-sah_.”

But Jared heard other words in his head, _If you ever call me that I’ll cut out your tongue_. He didn’t know if the boy would carry out that threat, but there was a reason he’d so vehemently not wanted Jared to use the title.

Jared shook his head. “Please don’t make me.”

The boy’s eyes widened and welled with tears. He backed off the bed, stumbled, and fled the room. Jared could barely breathe for some time. His eyes strained for sound thinking that the door would open at any moment, that it would bring some new pain or humiliation, but it didn’t. No one came to harm him or tend his wounds. The slashes on his skin weren’t deep, but bled freely and every movement was torture. His blood stained the pristine linens.

He was filled with confusion and anger and fear. He watched the glowing crescent moon slide down the wall, but he couldn’t get the image of those shining green eyes from his mind.

 


	3. Chapter 3

When the boy returned, he wasn’t alone. A naked slave stood behind him. He was tall and slim with dark hair and gray eyes. His shoulders were broad, belly flat, and his cock hung heavy and plump between his legs. He was lovely. Jared quickly looked away and to the boy’s robed figure.

“Since you refuse me. I’ve brought another who will not,” he said. The boy’s hands went to his robes then and began to remove them. The fabric parted and unwrapped until he stood before Jared naked but for the hood that obscured his face and hair, and it fell over his pale, speckled shoulders. Jared wondered again how old he was and what he looked like. Jared’s eyes didn’t tell him anything that his hands couldn’t feel in the dark. The muscle in his limbs was long, lithe without the bulk of maturity, and although there was hair on his legs, his groin was completely smooth and hairless. Jared realized the hair there must have been removed.

He took this in the moment before the Vajha crawled onto the bed. A hand in the middle of Jared’s chest pushed him onto his back, and the boy straddled him. The other slave had followed the boy onto the bed and pressed in close behind him. Looking down the length of his body, Jared could see four legs bracketing his. The Vajha’s cock hung hard above his belly. Behind it, the slave’s rubbed the inside of the boy’s thigh.

“Is this how you want me, dahsa?” the boy asked.

Jared trembled with fury. It burned in his veins. He hated the boy and himself. He couldn’t explain the possessive rage that made him want to throw the other slave to the floor. He clenched his jaw. The slave rocked his hips and his cock slid up behind the boy, into the cleft of his ass, Jared was sure. A hand appeared on the boy’s shoulder and pulled him back against the slave’s hips.

“No,” Jared said. He looked up and locked gazes with the boy. It was like staring down a cat. He knew the boy could see his fury, and slight creases emerged in the corners of the boy’s eyes. He’s pleased, Jared thought. The little bastard is pleased.

The boy’s head jerked slightly and the other slave eased from the bed and silently left the room. The moment the boy moved to the side, Jared rose and got behind him. They’d never been in this position, and he’d not seen so much of the boy in daylight. The sight of all that creamy skin made the slashes on Jared’s thighs and ass and belly burn and sting. Anger welled up in him again like lava pushing through rock. Jared and the bed were still covered in his blood, but the boy looked pure. This cruel, vicious boy, appeared spotless.

He had no doubt that the boy’s channel was well oiled, and he didn’t hesitate to grab his hips and thrust deep and fast into him. The boy’s head arched back, and he grunted in surprise. Jared reached a hand up to the boy’s shoulder and on the second thrust pulled his ass hard against him, and he pounded into the smaller body, spending his rage and humiliation and pain on it. Every moment of shame, every shred of dignity and decency and honor, every fear and dream were lost in that act of possession.

Jared didn’t care if he was pleasing the boy or hurting him. The aggression of the coupling had sent the kid to his elbows and punched moans from his throat. This was an exorcism, a transformation, death and rebirth. As he filled the boy with his seed, he knew there was no turning back. He’d chosen not with his mind, but with his passion. He’d chosen his body over his soul. All the praying in the world wouldn’t remove this sin.

As Jared’s climax washed over him, he pressed deep into the boy and spilled his seed into him. His hands stroked up over the smooth skin of his back, and Jared would wonder later how such creamy skin that never saw the sun could be covered in freckles. The boy’s muscles clutched at his cock and milked him dry. The kid eased forward, and his hole was wide open; cum oozed from it as he collapsed onto his stomach. His face was pressed into the pillows.

With the draining of Jared’s rage should have come remorse, but it didn’t. He felt empty. He sat back on his heels. His arm was extended at the end of the chain. Again, he considered wrapping it around the boy’s neck and choking the life from him. There was a time when Jared could deny responsibility, but no more. He’d been given a choice, and he had chosen this. He knew it was what the boy wanted, but the violence of it made it seem like rape. He wanted to believe that his rage had been for the way he’d been despoiled, but he knew it was as much for the boy’s willingness to give himself to someone else.

Much as he doubted it, he wanted to believe that there hadn’t been others, that he was somehow special to the boy. He remembered what the strange quintet had said that first morning about him having a purpose. He wondered about the tattoo and why it seemed to disturb the boy when he appeared in it. He wanted to sink back into impassivity. He didn’t want to think or act. There was a horrible calm safety in his slavery.

The boy pushed himself back onto his elbows and looked over his shoulder at Jared. A single green eye observed him, and Jared was chilled by how it matched the one on his skin. Then the eyebrow arched, and when the boy tugged on the chain, Jared stretched out next to him but didn’t touch him. The boy rolled onto his side facing Jared and reached toward him. His gaze was on the slash marks across Jared’s stomach. His fingertips came within a hair’s breadth of touching. His brows pulled down, but Jared couldn’t tell what exactly was in the expression, whether sadness or regret or concern. He wanted to pull the hood from the boy’s head and see him.

Suddenly, the boy rolled away from him and stood. He lifted his robes from the floor and began arranging them over his shoulders, wrapping and folding and tying until he was covered and secure.

“I’ll let Dok know you need treatment and have something sent for you to eat,” he said. He paused then and sighed. He lifted his hand toward Jared and then let it drop back to his side. “For your sake and mine, just do as I say, dahsa.”

Jared lay there for the longest time after the boy left, after the Dok and servants had come and gone, thinking about those last words. He felt like there was something more to them, some subtext that he wasn’t grasping, but he couldn’t piece it together.

Dok was disgusted and annoyed when he arrived at the Vajha’s chamber and saw the slashes in Jared’s flesh. He had Jared stand naked as he ran the medtool over his stomach.

“Whipped again?” he groused. “By the stars, how’d you do it? Heh? How hard is it to be the Vajha’s pet? You’re a moron, you know that?”

“You don’t understand,” Jared said. He didn’t usually talk much, even to the doctor, but he was exhausted and confused. “He’s damned my soul ...”

“Yer soul, ugh, you self-righteous prig,” Dok said as he moved the medtool to Jared’s lower back. “Yer a mess here. What did you do to make him do this anyway?”

Jared clenched his jaw a moment. “I told him no.”

“No?” the man laughed. “You told the Vajha no.” He was laughing hard enough that he had to pause and wipe his eyes. He laid the medtool down. He turned to Jared then without a trace of humor on his face. “Listen to me, you pent up, holier than thou fool, there’re more important things at stake than your soul. Be a good slave and do as the boy says.” He picked the medtool back up and began treating Jared’s back again.

“What?” Jared asked.

“Heh?”

“You said more important things than my soul, what things?”

“All of us. We’re all at stake.” The humming sound and warmth of the medtool continued.

“I don’t understand,” Jared said.

“You don’t need to understand. You’re good at blind faith; have a little now, if not in your god than in him.” The medtool began moving over the back of his thighs, and his muscles quivered.

“Why in him after what he’s done to me?”

“Done to you? By the stars, you stupid dog, do you know how many would have offered themselves to him – men and women? He chose you. Why? I don’t know. He doesn’t answer to me or anyone.”

“Why? Why doesn’t he answer to anyone? What is he? Why’s he so important?”

Dok clicked off the medtool and leaned against the dresser. “He’s the Vajha. He leads us. He knows the way. When you question that, when you defy him, you put everyone at risk. Quit being such a selfish jackass.” The doctor pushed away from the dresser and collected his equipment.

Jared wanted again to say that he didn’t understand, but he knew it was useless. He was just a slave. He wasn’t supposed to question or think. He was supposed to obey. But knowing that somehow his behavior, his cooperation was important, made his stomach twist with unease.

**: : : :**

The boy drew Jared from their bed and led him to a small door in the corner of the room. Jared had never seen it opened and assumed it was a storage closet of some kind, but when the boy fitted a key in the lock and opened it, he saw that there was spiral staircase within.

“Come,” the boy said and led him up the tightly turning staircase. There was metal grillwork set into the stone ceiling that let in sunlight, and the stairs were so narrow that Jared’s shoulders brushed the walls. Upon reaching the top, the boy opened another door that led to a stone courtyard on the roof that was no larger than the boy’s chamber beneath. It was open to the brilliant blue sky. Jared blinked at the bright sunlight. He felt like a mole. It had been weeks since he’d worked at the water pump, and the sun felt like a lover’s embrace.

The walls were higher than Jared could reach, but they were punctuated by gaps at chest height inset with more metal grillwork. He walked to one and looked out over the citadel walls. There was nothing but rolling sand and scrub and purple mountains on the horizon. When he turned around, he saw that a corner of the rooftop was covered by a canvas awning. Under it were low couches covered in bright cushions surrounding a low table.

He stepped into the shade of the awning. There was a bowl of fruit on the table and pitchers of water and wine mixed with fruit juice. Beside one of the couches was a pile of books and a vidtablet to watch movies and listen to music. His attention was drawn to the sound of running water, and he looked across the rooftop. In the corner was a fountain with a pool beneath that was large enough for two or three people to fit into. Near it were canvas lounge chairs arranged in the sun. He looked questioningly at the boy who stood watching him in the center of the rooftop.

The boy walked to him. “Do you like it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jared said.

The boy pressed the key into his palm. “It’s for you.” He looked down where he still held Jared’s larger hand in his. “I can’t give you your freedom, but you can have the sun and sky.” There was sadness in his voice and maybe regret. Jared wanted to tell him that it didn’t matter, that he had nothing to go back to. Freedom would mean little to him now, but the realization that he had no desire to pay penance silenced him. He was disturbed by his conflicting desires, and when the boy left him there he sat down on one of the couches turning over in his mind who and what he’d become.

His fingers toyed with the collar around his neck. It was new. The boy had put it on him after their violent encounter when the boy had whipped him. Gone was the thick leather collar he’d put on him that first day. This collar was a heavy silver chain closed with a jeweled lock. Somehow it seemed like a reward for stooping to the kid’s level of cruelty. That’s what he had thought, but the gift of the rooftop made him think that maybe that was wrong.

Going into the military had never really been a choice for Jared. He’d followed in his father’s footsteps. His father had been a hero, dying in battle while fighting for their way of life and Our Lord. After his death, Jared had spent his late teens and twenties learning to be a Warrior of Our Lord, one of the Chosen. His life had been about discipline, grueling physical work, self-denial, and absolute devotion to religious edict. His family had been the only point of pleasure or comfort. Physical pleasure had been highly circumscribed within the bonds of his marriage, and even then, even with his wife only certain acts were allowed. But they had loved, he and Rachel.

He lay on his back on the couch under the shade of the awning and looked down the length of his body – broad chest, flat belly, long legs – naked as he often was now that he didn’t go to the courtyard to pump water for the laundries. He had rarely been nude in the past – only in the confines of his marital bed with just his dog tags on. Now, here he lay naked, not for his wife, but for a boy, wearing nothing but a pretty collar that showed his ownership.

He closed his eyes and tried to think of Rachel. He tried to conjure her image in his mind – long dark hair, eyes like deep wells, wide open smile. Her breasts were small and high. He knew these things, but they wouldn’t come together in his mind anymore. As he became aroused, it was much easier to see wide green eyes and freckled skin. Jared knew in his heart that he’d never see her again or his children. Whatever future he had, and he suspected that it might not be much, was with this boy, dependent on him.

He eased into a new routine where spent his days when the boy was away from their chamber on the rooftop. He exercised in the morning and cooled off in the fountain. He read or napped in the shade of the awning. The two women he’d come to know as Zahaara and Migg would bring him food and paint his face. They wouldn’t talk to him of events that went on in the citadel or outside it, but they spoke of their families and lovers. Jared never spoke of his past. He learned that the vidtablet only contained preloaded music and books and movies. He couldn’t get any outside news or programming, but it was entertaining. It helped keep his mind occupied.

Still, he became restless as the day wore on. It wasn’t until the boy came to find him in the evenings that he would calm down. Knowing the effect the boy had on him, he came to look forward to the moment when he’d appear at the small door to the roof. It troubled him that he had become so dependent on the kid. It was almost like an addiction. Jared would pull the boy down onto the couch and strip him of his robes. It was only a sharp warning that prevented Jared from removing the hood that covered most of the boy’s face as well. It was with such need that Jared’s mouth and hands, every inch of his skin, sought contact that it was like he was trying to devour the boy. Jared would breathe in the rich, spicy scent that clung to him like it was air.

One evening Jared didn’t even let him get to the cover of the awning but met him in the center of the roof where he stripped him and pulled him down onto one of the canvas lounge chairs. He covered the smaller body with his own and nudging up under the edge of the hood, sucked a bruise on his pale neck. The boy arched up beneath him as fat raindrops began to pelt the rooftop. They slapped Jared’s back and the warm pavement around them. All afternoon a gusty wind had ruffled the awning and the sky had been heavy with clouds. The drops fell faster and harder as the boy spread his legs and drew Jared into him.

Jared thrust into the boy’s channel, so slick and tight. The boy was always prepared for Jared, which never failed to arouse him further. He was always ready to bend over, get on his knees or spread his legs for Jared. Arramite belief would call it whorish and sinful, but Jared had come to find it exhilarating. This vicious boy who’d raped and tortured him now practically begged Jared to use him however he liked. It made Jared feel in control, as though somehow he owned the boy too.

He pushed the boy’s legs up over his shoulders and thrust deep into him as the rain began to fall steadily around them. It caught in the kid’s thick lashes and pooled in the corners of his eyes, and Jared wanted to see him. His hand grasped the edge of the hood, but the kid’s fingers encircled Jared’s wrist and stayed his movement. Jared slammed into him as the downpour lashed his back. The boy arched up and cried out. Hunched over him, Jared felt the heat of his ejaculate splash across his belly. His own orgasm hit him like a missile. It was his own claim, shooting deep into the boy. He eased the kid’s legs down and buried his face into the fabric of the hood at the curve of the kid’s neck, and the boy wrapped his legs around Jared and stroked his back in return.

Jared felt a deep sense of satisfaction that disturbed him. He couldn’t deny that he was a deviate, and he couldn’t quite reconcile that with the man he had been.

**: : : :**

There were days that Jared didn’t think of his family. Then there were days that he thought of little else. Those were the days when he couldn’t concentrate on what he was reading and no song seemed right but for the most melancholy. He’d turn the vidtablet off and toss it aside. He’d lie there and stare up at the canvas awning contemplating what it would take to scale the wall and throw himself from the edge. But it was never a serious consideration. Jared was no quitter or coward. Whatever life held, he knew he’d stick it out.

Still, sometimes oblivion, even damnation, seemed preferable to this limbo he was in – this waiting. He had no doubt that something was going to happen. He had a purpose. He knew that much. He’d tried asking the Vajha about it, but all he got was a finger laid to his lips, a hush, a hot mouth in the darkness, a knitted brows in the daylight.

And so on the bad days, Jared would remember Rachel’s tired smile as she first put little Rebbekah to her breast or Jacob’s first steps or crooked little grin on Mary’s face when they got the puppy. His little dark-haired angels were so like their mother – good natured, kind, and full of love. Even when they fought, they’d be filled with such remorse for being unkind to one another that they’d make up with equal amounts of sweetness. It was all because of Rachel. Jared could hardly take any credit for their winning ways. He was constantly stationed somewhere far from them. He saw them infrequently and with such briefness. If he had any real regrets in his life that was it.

In his quest to protect his country and religion, he’d neglected his own family. He hadn’t been there for his children, and now he never would be. He wished that he could tell Rachel to forget him, to tell his children that their father was dead. He was. Lt. Gen. Jared Padalecki no longer existed nor did the man his children had called daddy. He wasn’t sure he could put a name to what he’d become. The quintet of fools called him _slave_ , Dok Shepp called him the _Vajha’s pet_ , the boy called him _dahsa, lover, my pleasure_. He was defined now by nothing more than his relationship to this strange, brutal boy.

 

  



	4. Chapter 4

For a moment Jared thought he was home. He rolled over expecting to find Rachel beside him because the air was filled with the light, sweet scent of keerwa blossoms like the tree that grew outside their bedroom window, but when he opened his eyes he found white linens covered in red blossoms. As he rolled onto his back, weight settled on his thighs and he was too surprised to move. The boy was completely unclothed, and for the first time Jared saw his freckled cheeks and plump lips that curved almost shyly into a smile.

Jared’s heart clenched. The boy looked younger than he’d imagined and not at all cruel. Jared’s eyes lingered there on that mouth that had kissed and bitten and suckled him. Sharp teeth caught the bottom lip and worried it. When it slipped free, the boy whispered, “Dahsa?”

He looked up, and there was a crease between the boy’s finely arched brows. Jared’s fingertips feathered over one high cheek bone and then sank into the dark blonde hair. “You’re beautiful,” he said. A flush bloomed under the freckles, and the boy looked away. When his gaze met Jared’s again, there was a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“You are beautiful,” he replied.

He held a green glass bottle from which he poured fragrant oil into his hands and began to rub it over Jared’s chest. The scent was familiar, the boy’s scent – spicey, almost peppery. Jared remembered the smell of it from that first encountered when the boy had whispered in his ear that Jared belonged to him. The fragrance clung to the boy always, in his hair and the curve of his neck, small of his back. This was stronger, intoxicating. Firm, slick fingers massaged his muscles and teased his nipples, and his skin began to heat up and tingle. His vision sharpened, and every freckle, every long curved eyelash was a revelation. The boy’s lips were the color deep within the curled conch shell.  Jared had to taste them.

He lifted his knees and the boy slid forward onto his hips, and he pulled him into a kiss, sucking on those luscious lips. The boy’s breathing was like the sound of waves on the sea, his hair like silk, and every touch was electric. Why couldn’t he have had this before – all of the boy, to see him and taste his mouth. This was intoxicating. Jared pulled the boy hard against his chest. His fingers explored the soft curls of hair at the nape of his neck, the knobs of his spine, the dip of his lower back. He couldn’t get enough of the boy’s pliant, wet mouth, the hard and soft of it, and that slippery little animal, the tongue, was just as playful as in the dark.

Jared realized vaguely that he was slipping away, that the fragrant oil was drugged, and it always had been. The scent was heavier, the affects stronger this time, but they’d been working on him from the beginning. He was too far gone to care. His hard cock was slotted against the boy’s, trapped between their bodies, and the kid was rubbing them together, slick with oil and precum.

The boy broke the kiss, and smiled at Jared. There was only a thin green ring around the blown pupils of his eyes. Jared wondered if he was aroused or stoned, not that he cared. He tried to pull him back down for another kiss, but the kid grinned.

“You’ve drugged me,” Jared said. His voice sounded strange, muffled.

“Euphorie,” the boy whispered, but it wasn’t quiet. It filled Jared’s head, reached down inside him, and made his cock twitch. Jared rolled his hips and his hands slid down around the kid’s waist.

“What’s your name?” Jared asked. The boy shook his head. Jared would have asked again, but the kid raised up then, and taking Jared’s cock in his hand, sheathed himself on it. The boy’s head fell back and his lips parted on a gasp. He was so beautiful and wanton. Jared couldn’t take his eyes off the way he moved as he rode his cock, his stomach muscles bunched, eye lashes fluttered, tongue flicked over his lips. A flush crept over his chest and up his neck and soft moans flew from his throat that nearly matched the sounds Jared realized were coming from him.

Jared’s hips were rising off the mattress to thrust into the boy, whose channel was grasping at his aching cock, undulating around it, hot and slick and velvety. Jared could feel tension sizzling out along his limbs like an electrical circuit. The boy’s mouth opened on silent cry as his body arched like a bow. His clenching muscles pushed Jared over the edge. As the boy painted Jared’s chest with pearly ropes of cum, Jared pumped his seed into him.

The boy smeared his cum over Jared’s stomach and chest, mixing it with the oil, rubbing it into his skin, and Jared pulled him back into a kiss even as the last weak spurts of jizz pushed into him. The kid relaxed on top of him and nuzzled his neck.

“Jensen,” he said. His breath blew across Jared’s ear. “My name. It’s Jensen.”

They remained joined with the boy lying on Jared’s chest. He didn’t mind the weight. It seemed like nothing as Jared drifted in a blissful haze. This was good. To be the Vajha’s pleasure, his lover, to let the rest go.

Too soon, the boy, rose and pulled Jared to his feet. “Come, dahsa, it’s time,” he said.

“Time for what?”

Jensen took Jared’s face in his hands. “Your purpose. Ours,” he said. His brows were drawn together, and Jared didn’t like that. “Remember what I told you.”

“Do what you say in all things.”

Jensen nodded. “Yes, dahsa.”

Jared wanted to hold the boy, and say, stop. He wanted an explanation, but the drug had made him compliant. He simply moved at the touch of the Vajha’s hand. As the boy dressed himself in a simple black robe, Jared stood motionless, waiting like the slave he was. Then he was made to put on a matching robe. The cowls were pulled up to obscure their faces, and the Vajha led Jared from the room.

Jared was unfettered by any physical restraint for the first time since he’d arrived, but he couldn’t run or fight any more than if he’d had steel shackles. The boy’s hand slid into Jared’s and gripped it. Jared was surprised again by the kid’s strength. He led Jared into the hallway where they followed a path of crimson blossoms through empty passageways and into a vaulted chamber like the one tattooed on his chest, and the past a row of robed supplicants who began a low chant and to a stone altar.

Jared filled with unease. These people were heathens, infidels without a god, and he was confused by the sudden appearance of religious ritual here. The boy drew Jared onto the altar with him where they knelt knee to knee, and the boy held both of Jared’s hands in his own. Jared tried to see Jensen’s expression, but his face was shadowed by the cowl.

To one side was the row of robed figures, in black as Jared and Jensen were; to the other, behind the altar rose a tall, lancet arched window set into the thick stone wall. Beyond it the first light of dawn stained the sky a deep blue. Within the chamber, the golden light from lanterns painted the walls in deep shadows and glowing highlights. As the chanting rose, the boy, Jensen, squeezed Jared’s hands and then withdrew one. A rustle of movement caught Jared’s eye, and he looked down, forcing himself to focus, to find Jensen holding a dagger. The hilt was pointed toward Jared.

“Take it,” the boy said.

Jared’s fingers wrapped around the jeweled hilt, but he couldn’t bring himself to grip it. He felt as though he was in a dream. He blamed the drug and tried to pull himself back to reality.

“Do it,” Jensen hissed.

Jared looked up in surprise and the light caught in one fierce, green eye – just like the one on his shoulder.

“Remember what I’ve taken from you – your woman, your family, your soul,” Jensen whispered.

Jared felt a spark of rage in his gut. Why would he say this to him now when he had surrendered and was at peace with it? The droning of the chant became louder, infuriating, like the buzzing of wasps inside his head. He couldn’t think, but he felt the fire of fury, of want, and hell. The despair and shame of his defilement came flooding back. This was just the beginning. He gripped the hilt.

“Do it,” Jensen said.

As he brought the dagger up and thrust it into the Vajha’s chest, there was an outcry and deep booming sound that shook the citadel. The cowl fell back from the boy’s face, and his body stiffened. He gasped in a breath but made no sound. His eyes looked wide with surprise.

“No,” Jared said. He let go of the dagger and grasped Jensen’s shoulders. This isn’t what he wanted. _Do as I say in all things_. “Why?”

Jensen’s lips moved as though trying to form words, but he had no breath to speak.

Black Birds, air patrol jets, with red crosses painted on their wings filled the pale morning sky outside the window, and their missiles shook the fortress. Jared sensed the movement of the supplicants as they ran for cover, but he couldn’t. He pulled the boy against his chest.

Keerwa blossoms and red-winged blackbirds, a bloody dagger and green eye – it was all there in black and red on his skin. The Vajha had known all along how this would end. Maybe he’d predicted it or maybe he’d planned it. Jared didn’t understand any of it, and he didn’t care. There was nothing in this world for him – not here and not where he came from. This cruel boy had taken everything from him, even himself. Jared didn’t care if the bombs shook the vaulted ceiling down and buried him under a mountain of stone.

**: : : :**

Jared awoke to the smell of antiseptic and harsh fluorescent light. He lay in the hospital bed back at the base infirmary. He was familiar with Red Base 3, an underground complex complete with medical, detention, living, work, and command areas connected by tunnels called travel tubes. From this bed, he could map out in his head where the rest of the complex lay around him.

What he couldn’t map was how he’d gotten there. His last memories were of startled green eyes and the sound of shells exploding.

“... lucky we got to you both when we did,” the Lord Protector said. He was standing just inside the door, flanked by two guards. Jared knew from long experience that there would be more guards lining the corridor outside. Attempts on the Lord Protector’s life were common by heretics and rebels and terrorists alike.

“I, I don’t understand,” Jared said. His head ached, but he didn’t think he had any major injuries.

Lord Protector stared at him a moment. Jared knew the man well. He could see the exhaustion in his eyes. His stubbled cheeks spoke of long sleepless hours. The older man jerked his head at the guards. “Leave us. Shut the door.” He waited until the guards had left the room before he spoke again.

“Do you remember what happened?” he asked. His polished boots clicked against the tile floor as he stepped closer. He was dressed in perfectly pressed fatigues, not the ceremonial garb of his station.

“My Lord ...”

The Lord Proctor shook his head and raised a hand to stop Jared. He made to step forward but stopped himself. “By the love of God, you don’t know how this pains me, son,” he said. Jared saw him then as he had been – his dad’s best friend, Commander Morgan, his Uncle Jeff, laughing and drinking beer at family barbeques, his strength and guidance after his father’s death.

“Your dad was like a brother to me. You’re the closest thing I’ve had to a son and the best of them all – devout, righteous.” Morgan rubbed his hand over his face, and swiped his thumb and index finger over his eyes. “What you did back there, Jared, you stopped the release of their demon upon us. It redeems you in my eyes, but in the eyes of Our Lord ... I wish you could tell me that thing didn’t use you as it’s pleasure slave, that you weren’t defiled, but it would be a lie, wouldn’t it?”

Jared looked away and nodded. He was pained by Morgan’s distress, but the shame he knew he should feel wouldn’t come. He could smell the ghost of the boy’s hair, feel his warm skin under his hands.

Morgan nodded. “I wish it were otherwise,” he said.

“Me too,” Jared said. “I should have died there with him.”

Morgan frowned. “Nonsense. You have some possibility of redeeming yourself through service and prayer. It isn’t right or fair, but the Lord tests us, Jared, even the best of us. If anyone stands a chance of redemption, it’s you.”

Jared couldn’t tell him how much he didn’t care about his soul at that moment.

“As for Ackles, he’s not dead. You didn’t pull the dagger out, so he lost very little blood. MedCorp got to you quickly. The wound was sealed, and when they got him back here, they did surgery.” He flicked his wrist. “Whatever it is they do. He’s fine. Better than you really, your head injury kept you out for a couple days.”

“Ackles?”

“Mm, Jensen Ackles, he was taken prisoner by Verraat back in ‘08.” Seeing Jared’s bewilderment, he went on. “You remember the village of Tankst on the Winecleff border? He was one of the civilians taken. He was sixteen. Who knows if he was coerced, indoctrinated or already a rebel, but he’s a traitor now. He’ll be put on trial – just for show, obviously, no one’s guilt could be more obvious – and executed. I’m thinking beheading. What do you think? Too barbaric?”

Jared didn’t know what to say. It made no sense. The boy couldn’t have been much more than fifteen or sixteen. It had to be someone else.

“That can’t be, sir. It must be someone else.”

“Nope, perfect genetic match. Did you think he was a Verraatian?”

Jared just nodded dumbly.

“Well, I have quite a mess to clean up at the fortress, and you should get some rest.”

“Sir,” Jared said. He was about to ask if he could see Rachel and the kids, but he knew it was out of the question. He’d never see them again. He was dead to them as he should be. He was an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, not fit to be a husband or father. “I want to see him.” He clenched his jaw and met the other man’s eye.

Morgan nodded. “I would tell anyone else no, but you ... Don’t kill him, Jared. I really do need to put him on trial and execute him. I’m sure you understand.” With that the man became the Lord Protector again. “Tomorrow you’ll be taken to the LeHelle Monastary near New Dallas where you will be accepted under a vow of silence. You will be shunned. As one unclean in the eyes of our Lord, you will touch no one, and they will not touch you. May Our Lord have mercy on your soul.” He made the sign of the cross and left.

Jared sat there empty and motionless. There was a time when he would have sought redemption and thrown himself into penance with faith and devotion, but all he felt was confusion. He couldn’t worry about his soul when all he could think about was this mysterious prisoner. It couldn’t be the boy who’d destroyed and remade him. Jensen Ackles had been sixteen in ’08, twelve years ago.

A MP came in then with a pile of clothes and boots. “We’re to take you to the prisoner,” said as he set the items on the foot of the bed. “We’ll be outside.”

Jared sat up and put his feet over the side of the bed. He felt achy and a little dizzy but otherwise okay. He stood and pulled the hospital gown off. His skin pebbled in the chilly air. He never understood why hospitals were so cold. Catching his reflection in the mirror on the inside of the open bathroom door, he was stunned to see that his skin was almost without ornament. The silver rings still pierced his nipples and the Vajha’s mark was still burned on is hip, but the tattoos that had covered his upper torso were gone. He felt like he was losing his mind and wondered how much of what he remembered was really some drug induced hallucination. Surely, all those hours under Dok Sheppa’s needle couldn’t have been a dream.

He turned and looked over his shoulder into the mirror and met one eerie green eye. One tattoo remained. He turned away and sucked in a breath before going to the pile of clothes on the bed. His hands shook as he pulled on military issue boxers, socks, fatigue pants and a khaki t-shirt. He cursed himself for the number of times it took him to tie the boots.

He stood staring at the door for a moment. The idea of stepping back into his own world – a world where he had been admired and was now reviled as a deviant – was daunting. But he had to see the prisoner, he had to try to understand what had happened to him before he could move on. He just hoped the prisoner could give him the answers. He still wasn’t convinced that the boy had lived and that this prisoner wasn’t someone else entirely.

He opened the door and nodded to the guards. They preceded him down the hallway to a tube station. A short ride in a travel capsule took them to the detention wing of the base. Several corridors and barred doors later, they came to a halt before a cubicle protected by bullet-proof glass.

“No visitors,” the man inside said through a speaker.

One of the guards slapped a pass against the glass so the guard could read it. “Orders of the Lord Protector,” he said.

The guard’s eyes widened and then he shrugged. There was the sound of a buzzer and the lock on the door beside the cubicle clicked. One of Jared’s guides, MP Rice, a dark-skinned man with unnaturally white teeth, pulled it open.

“We’ll wait for you here,” he said.

Jared nodded and stepped into the corridor beyond. The guard stepped from the cubicle and led him to a cell at the end. He eyed Jared up and down.

“This is really unusual, but it said to leave you alone with the prisoner,” he said.

“So open the door,” Jared said. He felt a little of his old command come back talking to this man. Even with the MPs, he’d realized that his rank and the authority it brought were so ingrained that even his fall from grace couldn’t completely erase it.

“You aren’t afraid of him?” the guard asked. “Because if I just leave you here ...”

Jared gave him a hard stare. “Open the door.”

The guard unlocked the door and opened it. Jared forgot the guard the moment he walked through the door, which closed softly behind him. The room was bare but for a man kneeling in the center of it. His head was down and his arms cuffed behind his back. He was dressed like Jared in fatigues, and he wore his dark blond hair in a military cut. His shoulders were broad, arms well-muscled. This was no boy.

“You’re not him,” Jared said.

The man looked up and Jared stepped back in surprise. He knew those eyes right down to the extra bright gold fleck in the left one.

“I am, and I’m not,” he said.

Rage exploded in Jared’s chest. He twisted the man’s shirt in his fist and yanked him to his feet.

“Don’t fuck with me. I want the truth,” Jared growled. He shoved the smaller man against the wall. His face was just inches from the other man’s. It was so familiar – the long, thick lashes, emerald eyes, even the freckles and lush lips. The man nodded.

“There’s no need for lies anymore, dahsa,” he said.

They were engulfed in a blinding light, and Jared felt momentarily weightless. He was suddenly standing on uneven, rocky ground. The sky around him was ablaze with golden light, painted in rose and violet. The underside of the wispy clouds was the color of a bruise but edged in coral.

His hand was still fisted in Jensen’s shirt, and there was a look of surprise on the other man’s face before he laughed. Jared let go of him and stepped back.

“What are you?” he asked. They were standing on a rocky precipice of a mountain. Far below were the fields under which the Red Base 3 lay.

The man’s smile faded. “I’m a Arramite, like you,” he said. “They told you that, didn’t they?”

Jared shook his head. “None of this makes sense.”

“I know, dahsa,” he said.

“Don’t call me that.”

He saw a flash of pain in the other man’s eyes, but he nodded and looked out over the valley. “I told you, my name is Jensen. When I was 16, the Verraatians raided my village and took me captive.”

“Why?” Jared asked. “That doesn’t make sense. Why choose a Arramite as the vessel for their god. I thought they didn’t have any gods.”

Jensen looked at him. “They don’t, Jared. Vajha is our god. The Arramite god.”

“What? No. Why would Our Lord bend to the will our enemies?”

“Because our leaders have betrayed Our Lord, Jared. They’ve perverted its word to subjugate its people.”

“No, you’re lying. You’re a deviate.”

A muscle ticked in Jensen’s jaw. “As are you.” He took a deep breath and huffed it out. “Look, I know the Vajha. He, she, it – doesn’t matter. It has no gender because it’s irrelevant. There is no deviancy, Jared. What we did – the act wasn’t a sin. Love is never a sin.”

“That wasn’t love. You raped me.”

“It wasn’t _my_ choice either. I did what the Vajha willed.” He shrugged. “Up to a point, I did. I’m pretty sure I’m damned now though.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t understand at first when they took me. There was a ritual, and the Vajha came into me. I can’t begin to describe what that was like. I was a kid, and there was this, not a voice, I never heard the Vajha, but I could feel it, its will pushing me, urging me to do things, and the Verraatian leaders. They told me that I had to choose another Arramite to take as a bed slave – someone unwilling, someone righteous – to corrupt and defile. They said it was the will of Vajha. I thought that it was insane, that I was drugged. I didn’t understand what they were trying to accomplish at first, but like you, I didn’t want to be damned. I didn’t believe them, but then I didn’t age. I came to realize that there was truth in what they said. Still, I’m an Arramite. I didn’t want to betray my people or their beliefs.”

He sat down on a rock at the edge of the cliff. He looked so tired. “Then I realized what those beliefs cost us. Look at you, destined to never see your woman or children again because of something that was done to you, something that you aren’t responsible for. Do you really believe a loving god would do that to you? What we did, if it had been out of love, why would that be a sin? Why would that damn us?”

“Sex is for procreation.” It was all Jared could think of to say.

“Then why is it a pleasure when a man lies with another man? That place inside you, why does it feel so good or when you’re inside me? No, I don’t believe it. I know it isn’t true. I know it isn’t what the Vajha intended.”

“Maybe the Vajha isn’t Our Lord though. Maybe they tricked you.”

“No, I thought so too at first, but I came to know the Vajha. I felt, I feel it’s betrayal at the hands of our people. I feel its pain for the innocents, for those harmed by the rules imposed by our leaders.”

“Then why would it have you harm me the way you did?” Jared said. He hated that his voice shook.

“Because even gods have rules. For its vengeance to work, I had to defile a devout man, a man with everything to lose, but what’s more I had to corrupt you. You had to want it. It was symbolic, Jared – the way of pleasure had to win out.”

Jared turned away. He didn’t want to believe what he was hearing. Everything he’d held as holy could not be a lie. All the pain, shame, the humiliation was for nothing. There was no reason he couldn’t be with his wife and children except everything they and his society believed. He shook his head.

“I was cruel to you,” Jensen said. “I’d lost everything, but I was catered to by these people. Whatever I wanted, I got. Nothing I did was wrong. I was without a friend. I knew it. They were using me. I was angry and confused, and there was this power inside me. Sometimes I didn’t know if what I felt and thought was me or the Vajha. But you, you said no to me.” Jensen paced to the edge of the cliff again and looked down. “Part of that rage was mine. No one said no to me. Part of it was knowing that you had to comply. You had to be the sacrifice. But Vajha-sah was enraged that you would defy it. I held back, Jared. I did. I struggled with it and reminded it that you had a purpose.”

Jared’s head snapped up. “You were supposed to kill me with the dagger.”

Jensen met his gaze. “Yes.” He bit his lip and nodded. “But I loved you. I hated myself and my god for what we’d done to you. So, I turned the dagger, and I prayed that you would obey me.”

“No,” Jared said. He felt nothing but anger. “If you’d loved me, you would have gone through with it. You wouldn’t have made everything I went through, and you went through, for nothing. If what you say is true, then somehow the Vajha, Our Lord, would have brought down our leaders and freed our people from their lies. Instead, you thwarted God’s will for your own vengeance and for me? What have you left me with? Nothing. I would have been a martyr. Now I’m just a man who must spend the rest of his life trying to redeem himself.”

Jensen frowned. “Haven’t you been listening? There’s nothing to redeem yourself for.” Jensen reached toward him. “You’ve committed no sin, dahsa.”

Jared stepped forward. His hands were fisted at his sides. “I told you not to call me that. I am not your lover. I never was.”

Jensen nodded and took a step back. When he turned away, Jared realized his intent. He reached out too late. His fingers brushed Jensen’s arm as he stepped into the air above the valley.

 

  



	5. Chapter 5

Jared awoke upon the first toll of the bell. He wanted to stretch but the narrow cot on which he slept was too short to allow it. He threw off the thin blanket that did little to keep off the chill and turned on the small light beside the bed. He stood and stretched his arms over his head, fingertips brushing the ceiling. Dropping his arms, he shivered before twisting his torso back and forth to loosen his back muscles.

The room was small, white, and nearly shadowless. There was nowhere to hide from one’s sins here – not under the small metal bunk or the shelf that doubled as a dresser and desk. It held just a few possessions – some books, a comb, his shaving kit, a notebook and pen. In the corner was an industrial basin/toilet with a tiny mirror over it. There was little to distinguish the room from a prison cell or the room he’d had back at Red Base 3 before his capture, except here he wasn’t allowed a VidCom or any contact with the outside world.

His skin pebbled and nipples peaked in the predawn cold. He’d removed the piercings, but the brand and tattoo remained as physical reminders of his fall. He always slept in just briefs. They kept his arousal confined and his hands from seeking to give it release. The monastery’s perpetual chill helped keep away dreams of a warm bed, grasping hands and a hot wet mouth. This was not a place of pleasure but of work and penance.

He bent and placed his hands flat against the floor between his feet until the muscles and tendons in his legs stretched and relaxed, and he willed his morning erection to subside so he could relieve his bladder.

It had been months since he’d hiked back to the base expecting his own execution in place of the escaped prisoner. The base had been on high alert, and he was dragged before the Lord Protector in cuffs and shoved to the floor. He went to his knees with a jarring jolt and couldn’t stop his forward movement. With his hands restrained behind his back he fell forward onto his chest and face.

“Enough!” the Lord Protector said. “Get him up!”

The soldiers who’d brought him in grasped his arms and pulled him to his knees. He tasted blood. It spilled from his cut lip and down his chin.

“The traitor, Jensen Ackles, is missing,” the Lord Protector said. There was none of the man that Jared had known as Uncle Jeff in that voice. “You were last seen with the prisoner. Where is he, Citizen Padalecki?”

 _Citizen_ – a reminder that Jared had no rank. Everything he’d made of himself was gone. He kept his gaze straight ahead in deference to the Lord Protector but his back remained straight, not out of pride, but from the habit and hard training of a soldier before his commander.

“I do not know, sir,” he answered.

“How did he escape? How did you get out of a locked cell?”

“He … I do not know exactly.” Jared licked blood from his lip. “I was angry and grabbed him. Suddenly, we were both on the plateau above the base.”

No one spoke, but it was as though every breath in the room halted for a moment and resumed.

“Demon magic,” the Lord Protector said. “And then?”

“He, Ackles told me that he’d been possessed by Vajha when he was with the Verraat and that I was to have been corrupted and then sacrificed to vanquish our people by destroying our faith.”

“How so? Who is this demon Vajha?” the Lord Protector’s voice was a low, dangerous growl.

“He said that Vajha is not a demon but our own god angered by lies told in its name.”

“That’s blasphemy!” The Lord Protector jumped to his feet and struck Jared across the face. Pain exploded in Jared’s jaw and blood flew. The man who had once loved him as a son stepped back. He withdrew a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hand on it.

Jared swallowed blood. “Yes, sir.” It had to be, Jared thought, otherwise everything he’d believed, everything he’d built his life on was a lie. All the sacrifices he’d made, the men he’d killed in battle, the neglect of his family would have been for nothing.

“Not _sir_. You are no longer a soldier here. You are a citizen. You will address me properly,” he said stiffly.

“Yes, my Lord,” Jared replied.

“What else did he say?”

 _That he loved me_ , Jared thought. “Nothing,” he said.

“What did he want with you? Why did he take you from the base?”

“I don’t know, my Lord.”

“Where did the traitor go after telling you these lies?”

“He … he just stepped off the cliff.”

“The troops found no body.”

“No, my Lord, I looked too. He just disappeared.”

“Why did you come back here?”

“Where else would I go, my Lord? I must pay penance.”

There was a long pause, and then the Lord Protector sighed. “Yes, penance. You will spend the rest of your days doing penance.” Jared thought he heard a little of his Uncle Jeff in the man’s voice then. It was a tired, regretful sound. “I’ll likely not see you again, citizen. I pray you find redemption.”

Jared swallowed the lump in his throat. “As do I, my Lord.”

In the intervening months at the monastery, Jared had strived to do just that. He wasn’t sent to the inner city monastery at New Dallas as expected, but to the Montalba Monastery in farm country. It was known for the fine wine it produced from the cercius grapes grown in the surrounding vineyards as well as the service dogs bred and trained in its kennels.

Jared was first put to work under the supervision of the head vintner Brother Zacchary. Jared initially thought that he would like the work, but it quickly became clear that knowledge of his background had gotten around. He thought that perhaps they should all take a vow of silence to prevent the kind of gossip that was routinely spread amongst the brotherhood. The fact that Jared had taken a vow of silence only made matters worse.

“You know, no one here is fooled by your show of piety,” Brother Zacchary said on his first day. Jared was following him through the wine cellar. Rows of wine casks rose on each side in the cool darkness. “Deviants like you don’t repent. You’re insidious – predators at heart just biding your time to corrupt the devout.” He turned briefly and gave Jared a hard glance before turning back and continuing down the aisle. “You’re like a cancer. If it were me, you’d be cut out like the sickness you are, but our Lord Protector has declared his mercy on you, so ...” He sniffed disdainfully. “The best thing to do is keep you from the others.” He turned then. “Kneel here and pray for your soul.”

Jared’s jaw was clenched with anger and shame, but he did as he was told. He knew he had no right to be aggrieved. That perhaps had been his greatest sin. He’d thought himself devout. He’d taken pride in his service to Our Lord as a member of the Chosen, as a husband and father. None of that protected him from the Vajha or the boy’s lust, and look where that had left him – degraded, soiled, lost, without family or rank.

Jared had stayed on his knees ignoring the pain in his knees, ache in his back and the eventual hunger and numbness that spread through his legs. When young Brother Colin finally came to call for him, he could barely rise to his feet. Seeing his distress, the boy reached out to him, but Jared jerked away and held up his hand in sign to stop. He couldn’t speak, and he shouldn’t be touched.

Each day for the rest of the week was the same – rise at dawn, wash in cold water, dress in his course gray robe and sandals, go to prayers where he knelt on the stone floor at the back of the chapel; then prayer on his knees in the wine cellar until Brother Colin came for him. He was allowed to eat in the main hall along with the others but at a table alone. He was a pariah as he should be.

On Saturday afternoon, he was called to the office of Father Misha. The blue eyed priest smiled mildly from behind his massive carved desk. This would be the one time each week that Jared was allowed to speak.

“Sit, please, Brother Jared.” He waited until Jared had seated himself in a soft leather chair before continuing. “Tell me of your first week.”

“I’ve prayed.”

“Good, good. Prayer is beneficial. Tell me of your days. You are working with Brother Zacchary, are you not?”

“He has me pray in the cellar.”

The priest’s eyebrows rose. “Does he? So you’ve done no work?”

“Only on my soul, Father,” Jared said.

“I see. Well, work is good for the soul,” the priest said. He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. He gazed at a spot beyond Jared’s shoulder for several minutes before leaning forward with a smile. “Do you like dogs?” he asked.

Jared had begun working in the kennels the next day. It was his job to keep the kennels clean and the dogs fed, watered and exercised. The kennels were large with anywhere between 30 and 50 dogs at any given time. Caring for them kept him busy, and he liked it. His speechless charges never judged him for his sins. They cared only for his company and his treatment of them. He was gentle but firm with them, and they respected and loved him in return. The kennel master, Brother James, was gruff but fair, and when he saw that Jared was good with the dogs he gave him more responsibility and less oversight.

His days fell into a routine that would have been pleasant enough but that he was too much with his own thoughts of regret and loss. Much as he tried to recall good memories of his family and comrades, he was plagued by his downfall and memories of the one responsible. During the day he could keep busy, and little things like the antics of puppies could bring tears to his eyes as he remembered his children as toddlers. As older dogs advanced in their training, he was reminded of his sense of accomplishment and pride when he had succeeded in his own training. There it was again – pride. Father Misha had been right. Work was good for the soul. It was an opportunity to reflect and learn.

The nights were so much harder. With nothing to occupy him and memories of bruising fingers, a cruel mouth, and clutching velvet heat, it was all he could do to keep from falling deeper into sin. There were nights when he’d kneel on the cold floor and pray to keep from touching himself. He couldn’t hate Brother Zacchary for his belief that Jared himself was like a cancer when the boy’s lust had infected him like virulent contagion. He couldn’t seem to purge it from his system no matter what method he used. He could hate the boy all day, but at night his memory would recreate the creamy freckled skin, firm flesh and plump lips unbidden. Even self-flagellation only brought back memories of furious green eyes and the fall of the flogger across his exposed belly and thighs and then the memory of taking the boy roughly from behind in covetous transgression.

In a desperate attempt at sleep, Jared would lie tense, almost shaking, as he gripped the edges of the mattress and soaked the sheets in sweat, repeating Our Lord’s Prayer over and over. He’d awaken stiff and cold to the pealing of the bell.

Each Saturday, Jared would continue to meet with Father Misha. They’d usually spend most of the time talking about the dogs and the training program. It was a dreary wet Saturday in the early spring. Jared had been up late with a whelping bitch, and he didn’t have the energy to put on a façade.

“I feel that you are distressed,” the priest said without preamble.

“I ...” Jared cleared his throat and stared his clasped hands. He took a deep breath and released it in huff before looking up at the priest who regarded him with a piercing gaze. “I can’t seem to find release from memories of my captivity by the Verraat,” he admitted.

“What kind of memories?” Father Misha asked.

“Sinful.” Jared shook his head. “Depraved.”

“I see. Pleasurable?”

Jared nodded.

“This man, the one who called himself Vajha, tell me about him.”

Jared hesitated, collecting his thoughts before he spoke. “He wasn’t a man. Not then. He was just a boy, the age that Jensen Ackles was when he was captured by the Verraat. He was robed and at first I thought him a woman, until he ... I never saw his face until the day of the air strike. He was beautiful. He was ... cruel, brutal at first. He branded and pierced my body, had me tattooed. He kept me chained ...” His throat tightened. He couldn’t tell this holy man of what he’d been made to do.

“It’s all right, my son. I’ve heard many things that would surprise you. I used to preside at Mt. Orab Church in New Dallas, in the brothel district.”

Jared’s mouth felt dry and he licked his lips. “He kept me chained to his bed, used me like, like a stud. I took pleasure in it. I sinned.”

The priest nodded. “Perhaps, but I don’t think you can be held accountable for what was forced on you.”

Jared looked up sharply. “That’s what he said, that a loving a god wouldn’t punish me for his actions.”

The priest tipped his head to the side. “Did he? Interesting.”

“But it wasn’t always forced, that’s just it. I ...” Jared’s throat tightened.

“You were seduced by him?”

“Yes,” Jared said, his voice barely audible. “I became complicit in it. I felt possessive of him. I know that’s what evil does. It’s why we have to resist pleasure. It can corrupt. It has. I can’t cleanse myself of it.”

“It haunts you,” Father Misha said.

“Yes.”

The priest nodded. “You said, he was a boy, but when you were rescued, it was a man that was captured.”

“Yes,” Jared said. “I don’t understand it either. It was him, the Vajha, Jensen Ackles, but older, his true age, but I’d know those eyes anywhere. He told me …” The leather of the chair squeaked as Jared leaned forward. “Father, he told me that the Vajha isn’t a demon but our own god who had possessed him to help the Verraat and punish us for twisting its word to enslave our people. That can’t be true can it?”

The priest frowned. “I don’t understand. What was the plan?”

“He had to corrupt a righteous man and then sacrifice him, spill his blood, my blood, on the Verraat altar.”

“But you inverted the ritual.”

“No,” Jared said with a shake of his head. “He did. Jensen.”

“Why?”

“Because he was tired of being used by the Verraat and the Vajha, and because he said, he loved me.” Jared felt a deep emptiness at the words, an ache in his chest that he didn’t understand.

The priest leaned back in his chair again, and Jared would have almost sworn that he was going to smile. “The human heart is an unpredictable thing. Here it thwarts the plans of demon or demigod.”

“You don’t believe that this Vajha is Our Lord, do you, Father?”

The priest met his gaze evenly for a moment. “No, of course not, Brother Jared. Of course not.”

Father Misha instructed Jared on a number of meditations and mantras that he said should help turn his mind from impure thoughts. He was also given some of books that the priest said would help quiet his mind. He thanked the good man and returned to his austere cell.

That night he dreamed of moonlit celestial shapes sliding across a plaster wall and warm curve of back fitted to his chest. A spicy, woody scent filled his head and made him feel warm and languorous. He pressed his hand to the boy’s flat belly and a large hand covered his, entwined its fingers. It wasn’t a boy in his arms, but a man with broad shoulders and firm, round buttocks pressed to his groin. He knew him. He knew that if the man turned his head and the moonlight caught his eyes, they would sparkle like Jhiracky emeralds.

Despite the priests books and meditations and mantras, the dreams continued, and they haunted Jared’s waking mind. The best thing he could do to keep them at bay was stay busy. The best part of his day was working with the dogs. Father Misha had been right about work being good for the soul.

Jared was crossing the courtyard to the kennels a few weeks later. It had rained hard all night, but the morning was bright and everything washed clean and glistening. Sunlight bounced off puddles, the bright blue of a wren house hanging from maple tree, the red of an upturned wheelbarrow. After days of rain, it felt like the first real day of spring.

Jared was just rounding the corner of the kennel building when he nearly plowed into a slightly shorter monk with his cowl raised. It startled him. No one should be there at that time, and he couldn’t think of a brother quite that height or with that breadth of shoulder. Jared stepped back and gave slight bow since he wasn’t allowed to speak. The other monk tipped his head, and Jared met green eyes.

Vow of silence be damned. “What the hell are you doing here?” he growled.

“Quiet!” Jensen whispered in an all too familiar order. “You’ve taken a vow, brother.”

Jared scowled and stepped close to the other man. Long, thick lashes shaded freckled cheeks as Jensen dropped his gaze. The spicy scent was absent, but there was no mistaking who this man was. Jared had an irrational urge to shove Jensen against the clapboards of the kennel building and wrap his fingers around the man’s neck and squeeze the life from him or to kiss those full lips, to claim him.

“Why are you here?” he demanded.

Jensen looked up through his lashes. “Why do you think?”

Jared shook his head. “You aren’t going to use me again.”

Jensen looked around. “You mustn’t be seen speaking to anyone. We’ll talk later.”

“I’ll tell Father Misha the truth about you.”

“I don’t think so,” Jensen said with hard edge to his voice. His eyes searched Jared’s face. “I hope not, dahsa.”

He turned and walked toward the vineyards, and Jared was left heart pounding and short of breath.

Jared had a hard time keeping on task that day. He confused the dogs more than once by mixing up their routine, but he never became short tempered with them. He knew he was to blame when they ran out instead of in or turned over a dish he’d left in the wrong place.

That night in the dining hall, Jared saw the broad shouldered figure of the new monk at the far end of the main table. He kept his cowl up and head down as he ate, and the conversation of the others seemed stilted and awkward in his presence. Jared ate quickly and went to his cell. He exercised for a bit and read one of the books that Father Misha had given him. It was about acceptance of one’s journey and surrender to learning through living. It didn’t make him feel calmer because it sounded too much like giving in to fate.

With aching eyes, he turned off the light and expected to lie there in the darkness, tormented again by his memories and guilt but quickly drifted off to sleep.

It felt like a dream, the weight across his hips and warm press of flesh, his cock hard and wanting, the familiar demanding mouth, tongue slipping between his lips … He came fully awake with a gasp and the tongue tangled with his own, searching and owning. Jared reached up and pushed at Jensen’s shoulders, but he was heavier and stronger than he’d been before. One hand was cradling the back of Jared’s neck and the other gripped Jared’s upper arm. His knees were locked on each side of Jared’s hips, his weight holding them down.

“No, no!” Jared said jerking his head to the left. His words imperative but quiet as he’d learned in the citadel.

Jensen didn’t move, but Jared could hear his heavy breathing, felt it chuff across his skin. Jensen placed a soft kiss on Jared’s neck. “Are you sure, dahsa?”

Jared struggled with the impulse to hold on or throw the other man to the floor. His eyes stung. He bit his lip to muffle the panting breaths. Jensen sat up as though readying to leave.

“Wait, wait!” Jared gasped.

“Why?”

Jared squeezed his eyes shut despite the darkness as though he could see inside himself. This was it – to fight fate or surrender to the journey.

“Hold me down,” he whispered.

Jensen took his hands and pulled them above his head. He wrapped Jared’s fingers around the metal slats of the headboard.

“Don’t let go.” His voice was like the purr of a great cat in Jared’s ear. His hands slid down around Jared’s wrists as he kissed Jared’s neck and worried the skin below his ear with his teeth until it burned and stung. Jared squirmed beneath him. Jensen might not smell like euphorie, but he was still intoxicating. Their hard lengths rubbed together between them as Jensen’s hips rolled against Jared who hissed in a breath as dry skin caught and then a blurt of precome slicked the way.

Jensen continued rubbing against him as he kissed his way down Jared’s neck and chest before sucking a nipple between those sinful lips. His fingers toyed with the other nipple. Jared bit back a moan and Jensen responded with a pleased hum. He caught the hard nub between his teeth and tugged and sucked and nibbled at it until Jared let a out quiet whine and twisted away. Jared was feeling desperate and needy when Jensen sat up.

Jared gripped the metal slats as Jensen lifted himself and suddenly Jared’s cock was enveloped in tight clutching heat. Jensen let out a low moan and became motionless as he settled back onto Jared’s hips. Jared was transported for a split second to that first day in the citadel when a robed figure had defiled him and taken everything that he’d ever treasured from him and then the memory was gone.

This wasn’t that boy. This was a man like him who had lost everything – his family, his soul, his purpose – who’d been possessed and used by some god or demon for vengeance. Jared didn’t know what it meant or where it would lead, but somehow he felt this was right.

“Please,” he said. He wanted more than anything to be lost in this, to feel as he had that last day when he’d first seen Jensen’s face and learned his name.

Jensen’s hands stroked his chest, and he began to move, rising and falling, rolling his hips with a sigh. Jared dug his heels into the mattress and lifted his ass to thrust into Jensen’s gripping channel. He bit his lips as tension began to coil in his groin and his balls felt tight. Jensen picked up his pace and small, almost hurt sounds fell from his lips with each plunge onto Jared’s cock. His fingers dug into Jared’s ribs. He jerked to a stop as hot slick spurted across Jared’s chest and belly. His cock was squeezed with such a tight grip of Jensen’s inner muscles that it hurt.

Jared’s climax hit like a landslide. Bursts of light exploded behind his closed eyelids as his body bowed off the thin mattress. The metal bed protested where his hands gripped and pulled at it. It was with satisfaction that he pumped his seed deep into Jensen’s body. It felt good and right. He fell back to the thin mattress, panting.

Jensen rubbed a thumb over Jared’s hip, massaging his come into the brand that had been burnt into Jared’s flesh more than a year ago. He leaned forward, chest to chest, and pressed his lips to Jared’s ear.

“You still belong to me.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

Jensen lay long and heavy against Jared’s side with his head next to Jared’s on the pillow. How different he was from the boy Jared had known who could tuck his head under Jared’s chin and nuzzle his neck in the dark. Jensen shifted and pressed a kiss below Jared’s ear. He would get up soon and go to his own cell, Jared knew. This is how it had been for days. Jensen would come to him in the dark where they’d sin here in a holy place, the place that Jared had come to redeem himself, and he’d lay beside Jared for a while before silently leaving the narrow bed.

This night Jared felt particularly lost and empty. He didn’t know why he’d given in to Jensen that first night, but now that he had, he couldn’t bring himself to stop. Yes, there was lust, powerful, overwhelming physical desire, but there was something else. There was this, lying there in the stillness of the night, feeling Jensen’s warmth, the beat of his heart, the only person who could come close to understanding him, what he’d been through and lost – his home and family, his purpose, his soul. It was confusing and vexing that the person who took it from him was the one who understood.

“I am well and truly damned,” Jared said. His voice was but a whisper, but it sounded clear in the quiet of the monastery cell.

Jensen’s hand cupped his cheek and turned his face toward him. His lips ghosted over Jared’s. “No, dahsa,” he said.

“Is that Jensen speaking or the Vajha?”

There was no response for a moment and then a sigh. “Vajha doesn’t speak, but I know.”

“I don’t know you, do I?” Jared said. “It’s strange. You know everything about me, about my family, but I know nothing of you. Even this body of yours is new to me.”

Jensen scoffed. “It’s new to me. You can’t imagine what it was like to wake up in the hospital in someone else’s body and see a face in the mirror that only resembles you.”

“No … I, I remember seeing you in the cell and knowing that it had to be you, but thinking it couldn’t be. More than ever, I felt I didn’t know you. I want to.”

Jensen sighed. “You know that I’m from Tankst. The Verraat took me prisoner when I was sixteen,” he said.

“That’s not much,” Jared said.

“Do you know why the Verraat attacked Tanskt?”

“There was a civil dispute,” Jared said trying to remember the details. “The Verraat wanted to try Arramite men in their courts.” He felt Jensen’s nod.

“Have you ever been to Tankst?”

“No.”

“Tankst and the Verraat city of Kezda are like one town with a wall through the middle. The Verratians rarely go to Tankst and only to do business. They don’t hang around. Why would they, you know? They’re unwelcome, but Arramite men go to Kezda all the time to drink and go to brothels. They have no respect for the women … or men for that matter. Both are for sale there. Anyway, a group of Arramite men were in Kezda, drunk and high on euphorie. They accosted a couple on the street whom they believed to be prostitutes. The couple resisted and the men took them into an alley where they beat and raped them. Then, they put them in a rubbish heap and set it on fire.”

Some of the story was coming back to Jared, but this wasn’t how he’d heard it. In the version he’d heard, the men were accused of having sex with two women who then revealed they were prostitutes and demanded money. When the men refused to pay, they were attacked and barely escaped back to Tankst.

“The man was killed and the woman badly burned. The Verraatians demanded that the men be extradited for prosecution, but the governor refused. Two days later an armed brigade entered Tankst to take the men back. The Verraatian troops clashed with police. There were riots and then an all out invasion, air strikes …”

Jared put a hand over the one lying on his chest and waited.

“A missile hit our house. I, I heard my mother screaming my sister’s name over and over, but part of the wall had collapsed and I couldn’t get to them. I was digging through the rubble when the next missile hit.”

“And?”

Jensen shook his head. “That’s all I remember. It was a beautiful place, the Winecleff Valley, a lot like here. Green rolling hills, cool streams … We had an uneasy alliance with the Verraatians that all came crashing down because of one violent act and our unwillingness to make the men responsible pay. We thought that despite the heinousness of the crime, they should be protected because they were ours and we were better, more pious, more loved by our god. No wonder Vajha was angry.”

“But, Jensen, why you? Why were you chosen?”

“I don’t know.”

“But there must have been dozens of Arramite kids, boys and girls both, why you? What made you different?”

“I was pure.”

“A virgin?

“Yes, not even kissed. I was promised to the church.”

It wasn’t unheard of in particularly devout Arramite families to promise a younger son to the church. He would be sent to a monastery or schooled at home, kept from the corrupting influence of the outside world. If raised correctly, they knew almost nothing of sex or human desire. Their education was in the Word of Our Lord and little else. Jared felt sick thinking of what the Verraatians might have done to that innocent boy to turn him into the cruel, lustful Vajha-sah who’d beaten and raped him.

“I should go,” Jensen said as he rose. Jared reached for him in the darkness, but he slipped away.

**: : : :**

Jared couldn’t help thinking of Jensen’s admission as he went through his routine the next morning. He released the dogs from the kennels into the outdoor runs. As he scrubbed down their pens, he pictured the face he’d seen so briefly that last day at the citadel – the blush and demure lowering of lashes when Jared had told him he was beautiful, cheeks as smooth as a girl’s. Jensen had looked younger than 16, and Jared knew now that he’d been most innocent of teenage boys before the Verraatians had captured him.

He understood then why Vajha had kept Jensen from aging. He was a symbol of purity corrupted, nature twisted into something perverse. He was what happens when lies and false doctrine work against a god’s will as were the men who raped and beat and burned two blameless people in a foreign city.

Jared couldn’t help but think of his own children, Rebekkah and Jacob and Mary, their sweetness and innocence. He and Rachel had agreed that if they had another son, they would promise him to the church. Jensen’s parents had done the same out of love and devotion. They never could have imagined what that had cost their child. He hoped that if Jensen’s parents were alive, they would never know what had become of their promised son.

Jared brought the dogs in out of the midday sun and made sure they had water before recognizing his own need for food. He stepped outside blinking against the noon sunlight. A brother was walking toward him from the direction of the main building. His cowl was up, but Jared recognized the broad shoulders. He was carrying a bundle wrapped in cloth.

As he neared, Jensen spoke. “I brought you something to eat.” He tipped his head up and sunlight cast shadows from thick lashes across freckled cheeks.

Jared tipped his head toward the path beside the kennel building, and Jensen followed him around the corner. There was a bench against the wall in the shade of the eaves. They sat, and Jensen unwrapped the bundle revealing a hunk of brown bread, pale cheese and apples. He broke the bread in half and offered Jared a share along with a piece of cheese and an apple.

Jared took a bite of bread and looked out over the vineyards that rolled away before him. Hills bracketed the valley on the other side and the river Shae glimmered in the distance. Neither he nor Jensen spoke as they ate their meager lunch, but pitching his apple core into a nearby bush, Jensen broke their silence.

“I awoke in a dark room. I had no idea where.” Jared glanced over at him. Jensen was looking out over the valley, but Jared was sure he wasn’t seeing bright spring day. He saw darkness. Jensen licked his lips and continued, “It was quiet and cool and … I was frightened. I didn’t know who had taken me there or why or even …” He scoffed. “… if I were alive. Sounds crazy, but the darkness was so complete and the silence. For a long time, I didn’t move or make a sound. Then, I called out because maybe …” He shook his head. “I don’t know, I just felt like I had to do something or go insane, but no one came, not for a long time. I was so hungry. It must have been a long time before the light came on, just dimly, but I could see the room. Just me in a corner on a bare mattress. There was one of those basin-toilet things like in our cells. Despite my fear I used it because …” An ugly little smile twisted his lips. “I was about to wet myself. I walked around a bit, and then curious and bored, I thought I’d see if there was any way to get the door open. It was steel with a small sliding panel at the floor. There wasn’t even a handle on the inside. The section at the bottom opened then and a plate pushed inside along with a bottle of water. I started shouting and pounding on the door until … I fell apart.”

“You were just a kid,” Jared said.

Jensen met his gaze. “I bet you wouldn’t have if it had been you.”

Jared thought a moment. “When I was sixteen, I was already training to be a soldier. You were …”

“Yeah, you were a lion and I was a lamb.” He sighed and looked back at the rows of vines. “It went on like that for I don’t know how long – periods of darkness and then light and food. I tried praying, kneeling there in the darkness promising myself to Our Lord, asking what he wanted of me, how this served him, what to do, but more and more I succumbed to despair or rage. I’d scream and pound on the door until my hands were swollen and bleeding.” He held his hands out before him. The little finger on his left hand was bent in slightly at the second joint. It had been broken and not set. He dropped his hands loosely between his knees. “I don’t know how long it went on, but I stopped praying and crying and raging. I just stopped.”

They sat in silence a moment before Jensen moved again. He scrubbed his hand over his face and rose. “I better get back,” he said.

“Thank you,” Jared said. “For lunch, I mean …”

A smile pulled at the corners of Jensen’s mouth and his eyes crinkled. “Thank you,” he said and walked away.

Jared let his head drop back against the warm clapboards of kennel building. He thought of how the Verraatians had broken that child and turned him into a weapon. All the hatred that had been instilled in Jared for the robed infidels boiled to the surface. His entire life he’d been taught that the Verraatians were out to destroy the Arramite way of life, but his head knew it wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t just about religion. Once he’d begun to climb the ranks in the military, he became aware that his country would do just about anything to acquire the rare metals of the Verraatian southern desert at low cost even if it meant sowing the seeds of rebellion amongst Verraatian tribes, selling weapons to insurgents, or turning allies against the Verraatians.

He had tried not to think too much about it. He was soldier, after all, not a politician, and the Lord Protector assured him that it was all to safeguard their people in the end, their way of life and Our Lord. It didn’t seem so easy to justify now. What if Jensen were right? What if Vajha was Our Lord?

**: : : :**

“There were others … before me,” Jared said into the dark. It was something that had been lurking just under the surface of his consciousness. He’d tried to ignore and surprised himself by saying it then with Jensen panting in his ear and their bodies still locked together.

“No,” Jensen said. He lifted himself and let Jared’s cock slide from his body. Jared grasped Jensen’s wrist as he started to move away and pulled him down beside him.

“Migg said you hadn’t,” Jared said, “but Dok said that … he said you were possessive, I thought there must have been others.”

Jensen propped himself on an elbow and laid his other hand flat on Jared’s chest. “Dok.” He chuffed out a breath. “I made him teach me how to do the piercings and the brand. I’d have done the tattoo, but I didn’t have the skill. He was right. I didn’t, _Vajha_ didn’t want anyone else touching you.”

“Oh, but you seemed so … experienced, skilled,” Jared said.

“That part wasn’t me. I was guided.”

“But your body … You weren’t hurt, that first time?”

He thought for a moment that Jensen wasn’t going to answer. Then, he lay down with his head on Jared’s shoulder as he once had, and his arm went tight around Jared’s chest.

“When they took me from the dark room, I was taken to a, I guess, it was a chapel of some kind. In the center was a stone altar that I was laid on. I was weak and everything was strange and I don’t think I was in my right mind. I was stripped naked and rubbed all over with oil – the same oil I used on you. It had euphorie in it. One of them, a priest I guess, would say ritual words and the others would repeat it. It was in Verraatian, and at first, I didn’t understand because I didn’t speak the language. They tied my hands above my head as they rubbed the oil in, everywhere, my groin and … One put his finger inside me, rubbed the oil there and I … it felt good and the euphorie was powerful.”

Jared tightened his arm around Jensen’s shoulders and pressed his lips to the other man’s forehead. Tears stung his eyes.

“They put a plug in me, and made me kneel and pray for enlightenment, to be of use to the god. I didn’t understand then, but as I learned Verraatian, I figured out that the ritual was to make me the vessel of Vajha, the god’s tool and weapon, and it did. The ritual was performed every morning, and I would kneel for hours with that thing inside me. They would use larger ones as time went on, so no, it didn’t hurt me that first time with you. But I’d never been with anyone else. I’ve never lain with anyone but you.”

The words sparked arousal and possessiveness in Jared. He felt jealous of the god that had given him this man. He wanted nothing and no one to be closer to Jensen.

“It went on for years,” Jensen said, “and they slowly revealed to me the plan of how an Arramite man would be chosen, a righteous man, devoted to his lord and country and family, and his body would be defiled and his soul corrupted by lust, according to the lies of the Lord Protector. Then he would be sacrificed, his blood spilled on Vajha’s altar. Only then could the Arramites see the error of their ways and be freed.”

“But you didn’t do it,” Jared said.

Jensen’s sigh blew against his skin. “They broke me, Jared. I became the vessel, but that boy was still inside me and he raged against them. They corrupted him as they did you, and a part of me hated myself for doing that to you. And then … another part of me hated you for being so naïve, a warrior for a false doctrine. If it weren’t for men like you, I wouldn’t have been torn from my family and used as I was.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I know. You were like me. Your children, Jared, they’re being told the same lies we were and raised to believe that their bodies betray them, that their natural desires are sinful.”

Jared rolled them so Jensen was on his back and he was leaning over the other man. “You believe that? You believe that what possessed you, this Vajha, was really Our Lord, that we’ve angered it, and it seeks to what? Get vengeance? Free us?”

“Yes,” Jensen said. “This isn’t over for us, Jared. Why do you think Vajha brought me here to you?”

The hair stood up on the back of Jared’s neck. “What? It’s here, the Vajha?”

“How do you think I found you?”

“You … you’re still the vessel?”

Jensen’s silence was answer enough.

“You’re to sacrifice me?” His hand tightened around Jensen’s arm.

“No, of course not. I refused.”

“Then, what? What are we to do?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Jared felt anger simmering in his gut. “And this, coming to me at night, it’s part of Vajha’s plan.”

“No!” Jensen’s fingers slipped around the back of Jared’s neck and tried to pull him closer. “This is about us.”

“I don’t believe you,” Jared said as he resisted the insistent pull of Jensen’s arms.

“But I told you why I couldn’t kill you.” Jensen sounded desperate and hurt.

“Because you were angry at Vajha.”

“And because I love you.” There was surrender in the words.

“Why? Why would you?” Jared demanded. His anger warred with an urge to soothe.

“Because of this, us, like this in the dark.”

Jared understood that – the intimacy, the need and comfort of hands and mouths, hushed words and stifled moans. They’d claimed one another again and again, not just at the citadel, but here in this room. What he felt wasn’t just lust or possessiveness.

Jared allowed himself to be pulled against Jensen’s chest, and Jensen’s breath was almost a sob in his ear. Jared cupped Jensen’s cheek, and it was wet with tears. He swept them away with his thumb.

“I know, Jen. I know.”

**: : : :**

“Brother Jared! Come eat with us!” Brother James called out as Jared entered the dining hall.

“Brother Jared has taken a vow of silence, James,” Brother Zachary said in his usual condescending tone. It was that more than the invitation that made Jared hesitate instead of continuing to his usual lone seat.

“Nonsense,” the gruff, bearded brother said. “Just because he can’t converse, doesn’t mean he can’t break bread with us. Come, Jared, sit here on the end across from Brother Ross. He doesn’t talk much either.”

Jared knew from the dirty blond hair of the monk with his back to Jared that it was Jensen. So they called him Brother Ross.

“Yes, Brother Jared, do sit down,” Brother Zachary said stiffly. “I’m sure Father Misha wouldn’t object were he here.”

“Ah, pull the stick out of your ass, brother. The boy’s not infectious,” Brother James said.  A chorus of snorts and snickers went around the table. Brother Zachary sat up ramrod straight, but James spoke again before he could protest. “Here have some wine and relax.” James poured a liberal amount of red wine into the bald monk’s cup.

Jared moved around the end of the table and slid onto the bench next to Brother James. His knees bumped Jensen’s under the table, but Jensen’s gaze remained lowered. A bowl of vegetable soup was passed down to Jared and James poured some wine into his cup.

“Have a little wine. It’s good for your heart,” Brother James said. “Not bad for the soul either,” he said under his breath.

Jared lifted the cup and inhaled the deep fruity scent, but paused with the cup at his lips. His eyes met Jensen’s over the rim. There was a familiar spicy, oaky scent to the wine. Euphorie. Jensen worked with the vintner and was drugging the wine. The moment to speak passed. He took a sip and set the cup down.

“There ya are, son. One of us,” James said.

Jared glanced up at Jensen and wondered why he’d never noticed before how the other man had a cat-like gaze.

**: : : :**

Jared was jerked from sleep by shouting and glaring light and rough hands pulling him from his bed. He wasn’t given the opportunity to dress. He was dragged from his cell by soldiers with clenched jaws. Once he was on his feet and moving down the hallway, they were silent. He didn’t know their faces, but he knew the black uniforms with red armbands of the Lord Protector’s elite guard.

The stone floor was cold on his bare feet, and fingers dug into his arms though he wasn’t resisting. He didn’t speak, not because of his vow of silence, but because he knew that they wouldn’t have any answers for him. They were but soldiers carrying out orders. Of course, he wondered what had precipitated this midnight seizure. All he could imagine was that Jensen had been found out. If the Lord Protector was aware that Jensen was there, he’d know that Jared had kept it a secret.

Jared was taken to the main chapel where his fellow monks had been herded into pews, and the walls were lined with more of the elite guard. The Lord Protector stood with Father Misha beside the altar and before it knelt Jensen with his hands bound behind him. There was blood on his mouth and his left eye was puffy. His robe was askew, baring one freckled shoulder and upper arm. Bruises were already rising on his pale skin.

Jared pulled himself into a military posture and faced his former commander with chin high.

“I’m disappointed, Citizen Padalecki,” the Lord Protector said. “You of all men, I thought could redeem himself. I had no idea how enthralled you were to this demon.”

“He’s not a demon,” Jared said. “He is the vessel of Our Lord.”

“Blasphemy!” the Lord Protector shouted.

Something struck Jared across the back, knocking the wind from him and driving him to his knees. He was trying to suck air into his lungs when a soldier’s boot caught him in the ribs. He curled in on himself and gasped. Another kick caught his hip and nearly threw him on his side.

“Stop this! Please, My Lord!” Father Misha protested. “This is Our Lord’s house!”

“Enough!” the Lord Protector commanded.

Jared remained on his knees with an arm wrapped around his ribs and the other holding him up. When he’d caught his breath, he sat back on his heels.

“You may not be able to save your soul, Citizen Padalecki,” the Lord Protector said. “But you can do the right thing by Our Lord and _your family_. The traitor won’t speak, but you can tell us his plan.”

Jared understood the threat to Rachel and the children implied in the Lord Protector’s words. He couldn’t believe it was real, that the man he’d known as Uncle Jeff, who’d danced with Rachel at the wedding and whom his children saw as a grandfather would threaten them. Jared was angry and afraid, but he knew nothing of Vajha’s intentions.

Jared could feel Jensen’s gaze on him. “I don’t know, My Lord,” Jared said. “I asked him, and he told me he didn’t know what the Vajha intended him to do.”

“Really?” the Lord Protector asked. He stepped down from beside the altar and nodded at the guards who pulled Jared to his feet. “You didn’t know he was drugging the wine?” A murmur went through the gathered monks. The man who had been like a father to Jared wasn’t behind the eyes that met his. Where there had once been warmth, concern, and affection, there was nothing.

Jared realized then that there was no point in trying to appease this man. He was not the man that Jared thought he was, and Jared did not owe him allegiance or respect. It was unlikely that he would live through the day nor Jensen either. This man was not his spiritual leader or that of his people.

“No,” Jared answered. “I don’t usually drink wine.”

“He drank it last night!” The voice was sly and pleased – Brother Zachary.

The Lord Protector raised an eyebrow. “Is this true?”

“Yes,”Jared said.

The man’s gaze bored into him, but Jared didn’t drop his eyes. “I wouldn’t expect these simple monks to recognize the smell of euphorie, but you ... There was a large amount in your system when you were rescued from the Verraat along with this traitor. You know its stench. You didn’t smell it in the wine?”

“I did.”

A muscle twitched along the Lord Protector’s jaw, and he walked away from Jared. “But you didn’t say anything?”

“No.”

He turned and looked back at Jared. “Why not?”

Jared looked at Jensen on his knees, lips stained with blood. “Because I wouldn’t betray him.”

“So you are a traitor too?” There was the first hint of real anger there.

“Perhaps to you, but not to Our Lord.”

A bitter smile pulled at the corners of the man’s mouth, and his eyes narrowed. “You think you can bait me, Jared? You think you can anger me enough to kill you here away from the eyes of the world and your family?”

“I’d like to think you’re honorable enough to not take this out on my family,” Jared said.

“Honor?! By Eyes of Our Lord, I thought I’d taught you honor!” Any façade of the Lord Protector dropped away. His face was flushed and fists clenched. “And this!” He pointed at Jensen. “You lie with this degenerate. You betray your God, your people and ...”

“You?” Jared asked calmly. Morgan froze. Jared wasn’t sure he was even breathing. “Is that it? You think I’ve betrayed you because I don’t believe the lies told in Our Lord’s name anymore?”

“Are you calling me a liar?” His voice was low, perfectly calm.

“I’m saying our government lies, and our church lies and has for a long time, before you ever came to be Lord Protector, and the lies are all to control our people, to subjugate them to the will of a few,” Jared said. He raised his chin. “And you are one of the few.”

Morgan’s face flushed darker and his mouth curled with ugly rage. Jared could nearly feel the man’s glare cutting into him. “You disgusting, lying, whoring degenerate. How dare you accuse me of lying about Our Lord’s Word, here in his house?!”

“Because he speaks truth.” The voice was quiet, but demanded to be heard. Jared knew that voice. It was the voice of the boy with the cruel mouth and hands, and there he stood before the altar, so young and achingly beautiful. Light seemed to pool in his emerald eyes and collect like glimmering shards of topaz at the centers. There was an alabaster glow to his skin. The blood was gone from his full rosy lips. He was as lovely as any maiden, but inhumanly powerful and strong and desirable.

Jared heard gasps from the monks. Some dropped to their knees as though these holy men recognized their Lord. Morgan’s mouth dropped open for a moment before he pulled himself together and the rage returned.

“Don’t kneel before this creature. It’s a demon!” he shouted.

The boy stepped toward Morgan and Jared. A mild smile pulled at the boy’s lips and his green eyes sparkled. “No, I am your Lord,” he said quietly as he had ever spoken, but the words carried throughout the chapel like the chime of a small bell. The sound was warm and comforting. Vajha took another step forward, but Morgan stepped back, out of reach.

“Guards!” he said. None of the soldiers responded.

Vajha’s smile widened, and he laid a hand on Jared’s head. “The most righteous among you has seen the error of his ways. Follow his example,” Vajha said. Some of the soldiers and more of the monks dropped to their knees. “And you, Commander, Lord Protector, will you choose to lead your people out of the darkness and into the light of truth?” Vajha asked Morgan.

The man shook his head, and with set jaw, responded, “I will not be taken in by a demon of the Verraat. I will not lead my people to sin and degradation. No.”

Vajha tipped his head and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t understand. Why would you deny me for lies?”

Morgan looked uncertain for the first time. It was as though he knew then that the god could see inside him.

“It’s your pride, isn’t it?” Vajha asked. His expression was nothing but sympathetic. Jared remembered his own pride, how he had loved it, and how the Vajha and this boy had taken it from him. The hand that had once held a whip that cut his flesh, now stroked his hair.

“I won’t kneel to you,” Morgan growled.

“I know,” Vajha said. His voice was thick with regret. His fingertips moved from Jared’s head to Morgan’s brow. The man screamed, and his body jerked as though struck by lightning before falling to the stone floor. Vajha’s gaze swept over a sea of bowed heads including Father Misha’s at the altar. Only a few soldiers remained standing and Brother Zachary who looked stunned and confused before he dropped to his knees. He was followed by the remaining soldiers.

Vajha turned to Jared and held out his hand. “Rise,” he said. Jared obeyed. “Behold your new military leader, Commander Padalecki. Under his command your military will protect you from foreign threats.” Vajha gestured at Father Misha. “Rise good friar.” The priest looked up with surprised blue eyes and rose to his feet. “This is your spiritual leader, the head of my church. These two men preside over separate realms.” He gave them both a warning look. “I will guide them both, but it is up to you, the people of Arramia, to hold them to account.”

 “Come,” he said quietly to Jared, who followed him. The boy stopped before the altar and faced Jared. Jensen was taller and sturdier than this boy, but just as lovely, with the same emerald eyes and full lips.

“I am sorry for what I had to put you through, dahsa,” his voice was barely audible even to Jared. These words were just for him. “But you were everything I needed you to be, more perhaps, and I leave my vessel in your care. Don’t make me come back here.” He seemed to look straight into Jared’s soul. “Remember,” he said loud enough for everyone in the chapel to hear, “love is never a sin.”

The boy’s image shimmered before him and when it became clear again, it was Jensen tall and strong, laugh lines around his eyes and stubble on his cheeks. He looked away as though shy or embarrassed. There was something so endearing about it that Jared wanted to kiss him, so he did. It was just a soft brush of lips. His fingers caressed the brush of hair at the nape of Jensen’s neck.

Jensen gasped, eyes huge and startled and then hungry. Father Misha cleared his throat, and both Jared and Jensen looked over at the priest who observed them with raised brows.

“We have a great deal to do,” the priest said.

 

  



	7. Chapter 7

Jared leaned his shoulder against the doorframe of the cathedral library. The room was relatively narrow in proportion to its height. Rows of books lined the walls, which were divided by a narrow balcony that encircled them about ten feet from the floor. Delicate stone pillars soared upward to the vaulted ceiling where carved angels looked down like disapproving librarians. They were holding books in their hands, and one even had its finger to its lips as a reminder that this was a place of study and contemplation. Old world as it all seemed, a collection of VidCom carrels had been set up at one end for use of more modern media.

Dust swirled in bars of light angling in through the high windows. Sunlight glinted gold in Jensen’s hair where he stood at the long table piled with books. A navy t-shirt stretched across his shoulders and worn denim cupped his ass. Jared smiled. Sometimes it was easy to forget that this man was the boy at the citadel – the robed figure who’d pierced and branded and raped him or the shy, blushing kid who’d revealed his face that last day – but he was. Those were just facades. It had always been a man inside and Vajha.

He and Jensen still had a lot to work out, and they’d barely seen each other since the “Miracle in the Monastery” as the media as calling it. That’s why Jared was there. After everything they’d been through,  Jared wasn’t about to let Jensen slip away. Whatever was between them, was too important.

He didn’t realize he was still staring at Jensen’s ass until Father Misha cleared his throat. Jensen turned and a broad smile appeared when he saw Jared.

“Hey,” Jared said.

“Hey, yourself,” Jensen said. “What are you doing here?”

Jared lifted the brown bag in his hand. “Brought lunch.”

“Really? Arramia won’t fall to its enemies if the General takes time for lunch?” Jensen teased. He leaned back against the table and crossed his arms. Jared wasn’t having any of that kind of body language. He crossed the space between them and as his palm cupped the back of Jensen’s head, the other man’s arms fell to his sides. When Jared leaned in to kiss him, Jensen’s hands gripped Jared’s hips. Jensen’s mouth was soft against his, and there was no resistance in his body. 

Jensen had relatively no experience in ordinary Arrramite society in … well, never, Jared had to remind himself. While Jared was working long hours to re-organize and retrain the military, Jensen had been at loose ends until Father Misha had requested his help in going through church archives in an attempt to find genuine doctrinal texts and weed out the lies.

It seemed to be a good way for Jensen to ease into society. While Jared was living in government housing near the Department of Defense HQ, Jensen had moved into communal housing near the cathedral and archive library. He spent his days with dusty books and the placid priest.

Father Misha cleared his throat again. Jared broke the kiss and looked up. The priest was giving him a rather pointed look with eyebrows raised. Jensen leaned his forehead on Jared’s shoulder, and Jared was sure that if he could see Jensen’s face, his cheeks would be bright red. He wrapped his arm around Jensen, pulling the firm, sturdy figure tight against him.

“So how’s it going?” Jared asked, tipping his head toward the table loaded with books.

“It’s slow going. It could take years separating the wheat from the chaff. And while lunch sounds lovely,” Misha said. “I do so hate being a third wheel. I’ll be fine here … alone. If you come back and find me buried under a pile of dusty tomes, well, it’s how I’d want to go.”

Jared felt Jensen shake with laughter. “Right, okay then,” Jared said.

Jensen lifted his head then. “I won’t be long,” he said to Misha.

“No, no, take your time,” Misha said with a wave of his hand. “The two of you need time.” His eyes were already back on the book before him.

Jared followed Jensen down the dark, silent hallway to a small door leading to the courtyard. He blinked against the bright sunlight that fell across beds of bright flowers and stone walkways.

“He’s something else,” Jared said.

“You have no idea,” Jensen chuckled.

He led Jared to a bench under a magnolia tree where they sat. Jared opened the bag on his lap and took out a large chunk of brown bread. He broke it in half and offered half to Jensen who smiled.

“Cheese and apples in there too?” he asked.

“Cheese and peaches,” Jared said. He took the remaining food out, bottles of water, and napkins. “Here, you’ll need a napkin for that peach.”

They ate in silence for a while. Jared rushed through as always, and Jensen took his time eating the bread and cheese, saving the peach for dessert. Jared wiped the peach juice from his chin and dropped the pit and napkin into the bag.

There was an area of bare earth in the center of the courtyard where the paths converged. A flat concrete base had been poured in the middle.

“What’s going on there?” Jared asked.

“They’re erecting a statue of Vajha,” Jensen said.

“Seriously?”

“Yes, it’s …” Jensen shook his head. “They’re putting up a statue of me. I … there’s something weirdly disturbing about that.”

“Yeah,” Jared said. In his mind, he saw the glowing figure, so like the young Jensen but so different, so beautiful he’d nearly wept. “It’s not how you look anymore though.”

“No, I know, but … I’d like, I don’t know, to distance myself from that. From who I was and what I did.”

“Jen …”

“No, listen, I’ve realized something important.” Jensen rolled his lips between his teeth a moment. When he looked at Jared, light falling through the leaves of the magnolia tree caught the gold in his eyes, the same eyes that he knew from those long days of captivity. “I wasn’t meant to sacrifice you, Jared.”

Jared’s mind grappled with the idea. “Vajha wanted you to sacrifice yourself?”

“Yes, the lesson wasn’t about vengeance, Jared. It was about love. If I had sacrificed you, I would have been acting in blind obedience – just like the Lord Protector’s subjects. I would have been acting out of hate and vengeance, not love. I had to act on my conscience and my heart.”

For the first time, Jared felt the true impact of what Jensen had done in the Verraat chapel, and he seemed unworthy of that love and sacrifice.

“You should have hated me, and you didn’t,” Jensen said. He rested his elbows on his knees and turned the peach over in his hands. “I forced you to do things that you thought would damn your eternal soul.” His thumb brushed over the velvety surface of the fruit. “There was a night when I awoke and you were holding me and aroused. You fucked me. I didn’t make you do it, you just … I felt …” The words seemed to catch in his throat. “The whole time I was with the Verraat, I was just a tool, an object. No one touched _me_ or spoke to _me_ or looked at _me_ , but you did.” He looked up with tears in his eyes.

Jared’s chest ached as he took Jensen’s face in his hands and kissed him.  Jensen dropped his forehead against Jared’s shoulder, sniffed, and sat up.

“He’s right, you know, Father Misha is,” Jared said. “We do need time.”

“Yeah, I miss you.”

“Me, too. We should get a place together,” Jared said.

Jensen’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Yeah.” He bit into the peach and juice trickled down his chin. He moaned as he slurped at the juice and licked his lips, and blood rushed to Jared’s groin. Holy shit, the guy was gorgeous and his. He was a little surprised at the thought. Jensen had said so many times that Jared was his, and he was just now realizing that Jensen belonged to him as well. He had for a long time.

Jared shifted on the bench as his trousers pulled tight across his hardening cock. He looked around the open courtyard, but there was barely any of shade or cover. He heard the paper bag rustle as Jensen dropped the peach pit and napkin into it. Jared looked over and Jensen had a wicked smirk on his face.

“What’s wrong, dahsa?” Jensen’s hand slid along Jared’s thigh, into the crease next to his balls. Jared’s breath caught in his throat. He grabbed Jensen and sucked the peach juice from his lips, licked into the hot cave of his mouth.

“Fuck,” he said, pulling away. “Is there somewhere we can go, Jen?”

Jensen grabbed his wrist and pulled Jared to his feet as he rose. He didn’t let go as he made his way down a pathway to a door in the corner of the courtyard. It led to a small room with a potting bench along one wall and garden tools hanging on another. As Jensen locked the door, Jared pressed against his back, arms under his shirt, hands, caressing and exploring his chest and belly.

Jared mouthed the knob of Jensen’s spine below his hairline and slid a hand into his jeans. Jensen moaned and pushed his ass back against Jared’s growing erection. Jensen’s palms were flat on the door for support as Jared rocked against him and grabbed, tugged his cock. Jared missed this – Jensen’s taste and scent, the hot, hard flesh in his hand. He was frustrated by the restriction of Jensen’s jeans. He pulled back and spun Jensen around.

Jared wasn’t expecting to be shoved back against the potting bench with enough force to bruise, but he didn’t protest when Jensen’s mouth crashed into his or when he frantically unbuckled Jared’s trousers and opened his fly. As Jensen’s tongue breached his mouth, his hands were pushing Jared’s trousers off his hips. It was a relief to get his straining cock free, but contact with the rough denim of Jensen’s jeans made him flinch. He was distracted by deft slip and slide of Jensen’s tongue, retreat, teeth grasping his bottom lip and tugging. A whine escaped Jared’s throat that made him blush.

Jensen’s eyes were dark with a thin ring of green as he leaned back with a smirk. “I’ll take care of you,” he said before dropping to his knees. His mouth was so hot and wet and perfect that Jared’s knees were weak. He sank his fingers in Jensen’s hair and tried to keep from thrusting forward.

“Holy fuck, Jen, your mouth, so fucking good,” Jared babbled as Jensen took the head of his cock into his throat. The thought of spilling straight down Jensen’s throat almost caused him to come right then, but he drew in a ragged breath and pulled himself back from the edge as Jensen squeezed the base of his cock to hold off orgasm. Precome and spit were running over his balls when Jensen suddenly let Jared’s dick slide from his mouth. He tightened his fingers in Jensen’s hair and fought the urge to push Jensen’s face into his groin.

Jensen reached up and caught Jared’s wrists in his slick hands. He stood and kissed him. His chin and lips were wet with Jared’s juices. “Fuck me,” he growled.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jared replied as he pushed away from the bench. They switched places as Jensen opened his fly and pushed his jeans down. The back of Jensen’s neck was feverish when Jared wrapped his long fingers around it and pushed him down over the work surface. His other hand stroked the firm flesh of his ass cheek and his fingers breached the crease seeking the tight hole. It had been too long, and he was in control this time. It all had Jared so wound up he felt like he could burst into flame. His cock was dripping but Jensen was dry. Still holding him down, Jared licked two fingers and pushed back into the cleft and against the ring of muscle, which opened and tightened around the digits. Jensen groaned and pushed back.

“Want your cock,” he said.

“Don’t want to hurt you,” Jared said as he worked his fingers in and out. Jensen was so tight and slick and soft inside. Jared wanted in there so much, his hips rolled forward instinctively.

“Won’t; use my fingers every night thinking about you,” Jensen said.

“Oh god,” Jared said. He pulled his fingers out and hoping that he could get his cock in before he came. Jared bit his lip at the first clutch of Jensen’s flesh around the head of his dick. It felt so unbelievably right, like nothing else. He pushed in fast and hard, and Jensen cried out. Jared’s fingers tightened and released at the base of Jensen’s skull. The muscles were bunched under his fingers. Their bodies pulled apart and slammed back together.

“Fuck, holy fuck, Jen,” Jared panted.

“Yeah, yeah, fuck yes, fuck me, own me, come on, come on,” Jensen continued the string of curses and begging as Jared pounded into him. He braced a hand on the wall above the bench to keep from being slammed into it by Jared’s brutal thrusting.

Jensen’s skin was slick with sweat under Jared’s hand, and the hair on the back of his neck was darkened and spikey with it. It glistened on his freckled shoulders. Despite Jared’s aroused state, his frantic movements, he was memorizing every detail from curve of Jensen’s ears to the graceful valley of his spine where it arched in response. They’d spent too many hours in the dark. He wanted to see every inch of Jensen.

Suddenly Jensen’s head dropped and he gasped as his muscles clenched around Jared’s cock. It was so familiar and so hot – Jensen coming on his cock, untouched. The tension that had been building Jared’s groin released, and he pushed hard into Jensen’s channel, spilling deep. Another couple shallow thrusts and he fitted himself to Jensen’s arched back, wrapped an arm around Jensen’s waist, and shuddered the last of release into Jensen’s body.

They stayed that way for a few moments – weak kneed, panting and satisfied. Jared lifted his cheek from Jensen’s shoulder and kissed the damp skin.

“My god, I missed you,” Jared said.

“Mm, me too,” Jensen mumbled.

Jared stood up straight. “Ready?” He waited for Jensen to grab some paper towels from a nearby roll before sliding his cock free. Jensen wiped himself, wet some more paper towels in the utility sink and wiped again. Jared cleaned himself up, and by the time he had himself properly dressed again so was Jensen. They smiled at one another.

“Is it obvious?” Jensen asked. His lips were puffy, hair damp, and cheeks flushed.

“Yeah, it kind of is,” Jared said. “But I don’t think the good friar will mind.”

“No, I mean, he said we needed some time, right?”

Jared laughed. “Right. I’m sure this is what he meant.”

**: : : :**

Jared had been working up to meeting with Rachel. After his rescue from the Verraat, he’d agreed to the dissolution of their marriage. He didn’t want his shame following his family, and Rachel deserved to be able to remarry. Upon taking command, however, he’d sought out information about her and the kids and discovered that she’d remarried eight months earlier to a journalist named Malik Witfield. They’d met when he interviewed her for a story about Jared when he was rescued.

Jared was nervous about seeing her again. He might be the most powerful person in the Arramite military, but she held the power over the most important thing in his life – his children. He wanted to be a part of their lives, and reaching out to their mother was the first step.

They’d talked briefly on the phone a couple of times and then agreed to meet and discuss the kids. He’d arrived at the coffee shop early. That’s the kind of strategist he was. Get there early, find the right place to sit where he could see the door, already have something to drink, relax and prepare himself mentally and emotionally. She wasn’t the enemy. He hoped, but better to be prepared. He didn’t know her husband. He was a wild card.

Malik was with her as she entered the café. Malik was tall and goateed. He was wearing khakis and a gold button-down with the cuffs rolled up. The color showed off his dark complexion. Rachel looked tiny beside him. He held a hand at the small of her back. She smiled hesitantly.

“Rachel,” Jared said and stood as she approached.

“Jared, gosh, I ... I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said. Her voice shook, and he saw tears standing in her eyes.

“Thanks, you look well,” he said.

“This is Malik, my husband,” she said. She held her purse in both hands before her like a shield.

Jared held out his hand, and Malik reached around Rachel to shake it. He squeezed her shoulders then, and said, “I’ll meet you at the library, okay?”

“Yeah, thanks,” she said.

Malik nodded. “Jared, nice to meet you.”

“Yes, you too,” Jared said. As Malik left the cafe, Jared pulled a chair out for her. “Have a seat. Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thanks,” she said. She set her purse down and smoothed her skirt as she sat. It was quick, but he saw the familiar ripeness of her breasts and the slight swell of her belly before it was hidden by the table. She saw his gaze and blushed.

“Malik seems nice,” he said as he sat back down. Through the window, he saw the tall figure cross the street to the library and sit down on a bench outside the door. Jared knew that he could see them from across the street. So Malik was a strategist too.

“He is,” she agreed. “He’s very nice and good with the kids.” Her back was to the window and she couldn’t see her husband watching them through the window. Jared wondered if she knew.

“Yeah.” He turned his attention back to Rachel.

“We’re going to have another, but I guess you figured that out,” she said.

“When are you due?”

“December, three months.”

“And he’s a reporter?”

“Yes, local,” she said.

“That must be nice.”

She tipped her head. “He likes it okay.”

“No, I mean, it must be nice to have him home every night, weekends.”

“Oh, yes.” She looked sad. “Nice to not worry about him getting shot at routinely.” She twisted a napkin between her fingers.

“I’m sorry, you know,” he said. “I can’t even begin to tell you. The things I gave up or lost for ...”

“Jared, none of us knew,” she said.

“I know, but ...” he shook his head. “How are the kids?”

“They’re good,” she said. “So big, but healthy and smart. They miss you. I mean, Rebekkah, she saw you on TV, and ...” Her voice trembled and she bit her lip. It hit Jared like a knife in the heart how abandoned his children must feel.

“So they remember me?”

“Rebekkah and Jacob do. Mary was so little though, Jared.” She shook her head, and tears sprang to his eyes.

“I’d like to see them; still be a part of their lives,” he said.

Her face grew serious. “Is it true, Jared, about you and that man?”

That man. The official video that was released of the miracle in the chapel had been edited to only show Vajha in the vessel of the boy.  The only way that Rachel could know about Jensen was from Morgan. He could only imagine the kinds of things he told her.

“His name is Jensen, and he was used as a vessel by Our Lord, Rachel.”

“I don’t understand that,” she said. “Why would Our Lord harm you that way?”

Jared let out a humorless laugh. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Try,” she said. Her brow was knitted as it did when she intensely wanted to understand something.

“Vajha was enraged by what was being done in his name. Yes, what he did to me was horrible, but Rachel, understand that Jensen was a just a kid, sixteen, when the god took him from his family and ... I can’t even describe the things that happened to him at the hands of the Verraat. Try to understand that he isn’t a horrible person. The things he did were Vajha’s doing. He meant to ... I don’t know, make us question the things we’d been told, to break us down beyond the things we’d been raised to believe. We came to see each other and relate to one another in our most essential human ways.”

“Sexually.”

“That was part of it,” Jared admitted. He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Whatever Morgan told you, Rachel, he didn’t understand what happened and he probably twisted what he did. In the end, Jensen believed that he was supposed to sacrifice me. He refused. He put the dagger in my hand. He sacrificed himself. _That’s_ what Vajha wanted him to do. He wanted us to understand that we aren’t to blindly obey doctrine – that we should act out of love, not blind obedience.”

Her eyes were wide and sparkling. “That’s a story that needs to be told, Jared.”

“Yeah.” He leaned back in his chair.

“No, truly, because people don’t understand. There are those who think this whole thing was just a coup to take down the Lord Protector or that Verraatians are behind it. People need to hear the story to be able to understand why Our Lord did what he did.”

Jared knew she was right. Much as he didn’t want his story with Jensen to become public fodder, he knew that it was important to the understanding of why everything was changing. The moral code of their society was too ingrained to for many to just turn their back on. While there were those who’d rebelled on their own because they didn’t see how discrimination and prejudice could be the will of a loving god, there were others, himself included, who had simply followed the rules because it was to their benefit or appealed to their sense of superiority or for the promise of salvation.

He nodded. “I know you’re right. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. Jensen and I are still trying work things out, you know, now that he’s just a guy.”

“You love him?”

A rueful smile pulled at his lips. “Yes.”

“Despite everything?”

“And because of it, yeah. We’ve been through so much together.”

“I hope it works out for you,” she said. He was surprised. He hadn’t expected her to wish him well with Jensen, but he knew her well enough to know it wasn’t a lie.

“Thank you,” he said. He pursed his lips. “You know I didn’t just ask you to meet in order to catch up.”

“I know. You want to see the kids, don’t you?”

“You said that Rebekkah saw me on the VidCom. We can’t just let them think that I’ve abandoned them, Rachel.”

“I know. I don’t want that either.”

“So ...”

“I’ve been thinking about it, and … why don’t you come over Sunday afternoon and spend some time with them.”

“Malik won’t mind?”

“You’re their father. This isn’t about me. He understands that. I’m his wife. I’m having his baby. You aren’t a threat to that.”

“No,” he said, “I’m not.” He couldn’t help but think back that first day at the citadel and his anguish at losing her because of what Jensen had done to him.

“Jared, are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I just ... Sometimes I can’t believe the turns my life has taken.”

She nodded and smiled. “I think the whole country’s feeling that way right now.”

The comment was so unexpected, he laughed. “Yeah, well imagine that about ten fold.”

“So Sunday?” she asked as she picked up her purse.

“Yeah, absolutely.” He stood when she did. “What time?”

“Three o’clock?”

“I’ll be there.”

**: : : :**

Jared had spent almost every Sunday afternoon since then with his children. At first he went to their home, but he’d also taken them to the movies and the zoo. This Sunday was different. Today, they were going to the park and they were going to meet Jensen. Jared had come to feel relaxed around the kids, but he felt butterflies in his stomach as they crossed the grass to a shady tree not far from the playground.

He carried a lunch basket in one hand and toddler Mary on his hip. Rebekkah kept taking Jacob’s hand, and he would pull it away each time in a battle of big sisterly responsibility versus little brother independence.

“Help me spread out the blanket, Bekkah,” Jared said. He set Mary down and she began ambling after Jacob who was running toward the swings. “Whoa! Jake! Come back here a minute and watch your little sister.” Jacob turned around with an exaggerated shrug. “Don’t roll your eyes at me.”

Rebekkah was trying to hide her grin as she helped Jared smooth the blanket out on the grass. “It isn’t nice to take pleasure in other people’s unhappiness, Bekk,” Jared said.

Her eyes got big. “I know, Daddy. I’m sorry.”

Jared smiled. “It’s okay. I know how it is. I have a brother too.”

She smiled back and then turned to her brother. “Here, Jacob, I’ll take Mary.” She took the toddler’s hand from him, and he looked suspiciously at her before running off to the playground. Rebekkah sat down on the blanket and pulled Mary onto her lap. The toddler went stiff and wriggled out of her sister’s grasp. She pushed herself to her feet, and when Jared sat down she threw herself at him.

Moments like that made Jared’s heart feel like it could burst. Rachel had said Mary didn’t remember him, and he had feared that she wouldn’t warm up to him. She had been shy the first couple of times he’d visited the house, but once she decided she liked him, she wanted his almost constant attention. He hugged her and kissed the top of her head. When he’d told Jensen that Mary had decided to like him, Jensen had replied that all kids like puppies.

“I’m hungry, Daddy,” Rebekkah said.

“Yeah, me too,” he said. “We’ll eat as soon as Jensen gets here. Tell you what. Get the grapes out and eat a few of those while we wait.”

Rebekkah didn’t respond. She was looking past him and up and up.

“Don’t wait on my account,” a voice above him said. He turned to find Jensen standing behind him. Jensen sat beside him on the blanket.

“Hey,” Jared said.

“Sorry, I’m late.” Jensen smiled at him and then at Rebekkah.

“You aren’t late at all,” Jared said. “We’re just hungry.”

“Really? That’s a surprise,” Jensen teased.

“Jen, this is Mary and this is Rebekkah,” Jared said.

Rebekkah hadn’t taken her eyes off Jensen the entire time. She’d hardly blinked. “You have pretty eyes,” she blurted out. Color rose in Jensen’s cheeks and before he could reply, she continued, “They’re like Our Lord Vajha’s.”

Jensen dropped his gaze and swallowed. Rebekkah eyes widened as though she’d realized that she’d made an adult uncomfortable for the first time in her young life. Jared for once in his life was at a loss for words, but Jensen smiled at the child. “What a nice thing to say. Thank you, Rebekkah.”

She smiled with relief. “You’re welcome.”

“Bekkah, why don’t you get your brother and we’ll eat, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy,” she said and bounded off toward the playground.

“Sorry,” Jared said, “I never thought …”

“It’s okay. She’s a child,” Jensen said. “She’s honest and sweet.”

Another reason to love Jensen, Jared thought. He’s goodhearted with children. It was another piece of them that fit together.

“Yeah, she is. Thanks,” Jared said.

Rebekkah and Jacob came running back from the playground and threw themselves down on the blanket.

“I’m starving!” Jacob announced.

“Like father like son,” Jensen murmured and Jared just grinned as he unpacked sandwiches and chips.

“Jacob, this is my friend Jensen,” Jared said.

Jacob eyed Jensen suspiciously as though he hadn’t noticed him before. Jensen held his hand out. “It’s very nice to meet you, Jacob,” Jensen said. After a moment of hesitation Jacob put his hand out to be shaken.

“Hi,” he said quietly.

“How old are you, Jacob,” Jensen asked as he unwrapped a roast beef sandwich.

“Six,” the boy said before stuffing chips into his mouth.

“Six? Really? You’re tall for six. You’re going to be big like your dad, I think,” Jensen said and winked at Jared. Jacob tried to smile without losing the mouthful of food.

“I’m eight,” Rebekkah announced. She wasn’t one to be left in the shadows.

“Almost eight,” Jared corrected.

“ _Almost_ eight,” she repeated. “Next month.”

“I would have guessed you were already eight, closer to nine,” Jensen said. “You’re very mature.”

She gave Jared a “so there” look and dug into her sandwich. Jared poured cups of lemonade and passed them around. The little group fell into silence as they ate their lunch. Mary stayed on Jared’s lap, and he fed himself and her. She quietly watched Jensen as she accepted bites of food. By the time they were finished eating, Jacob was kneeling and wiggling around as though he needed to use the restroom, but he was still munching on a cookie and eyeing another one.

“Jacob, do you need to go to the restroom?” Jared asked. The boy quit moving and shook his head. “I think you do. Come on.”

“I can go with him, Jared,” Jensen said. “What do you say, Jake? I’ll walk over with you. Then you can have another cookie when we get back.”

“Okay,” the boy said with a shrug.

Jared watched them walk away, his two boys – one small, bouncing and chattering away beside the tall and slightly bow-legged one. Jared smiled.

“Is he your boyfriend, Daddy?”

Jared’s heart seemed to rise in his throat as his attention turned to his eldest daughter. There was not judgment in her expression, just open curiosity. “Yeah, Bekkah, he is.”

She smiled. “I like him. He’s nice,” she said, “and cute.” She took a big bite of chocolate chip cookie. “Can I go play on the swings now?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jared said. She ran off to the playground. Jensen and Jacob met her there. A brief conversation took place during which Jacob must have decided he’d rather play than eat another cookie. Jensen walked back alone. He helped Jared pack the remaining food back up and throw the trash away.

Jared could tell by Mary’s unfocused gaze that she was getting sleepy. He laid her down on the blanket and gave her favorite blue plush puppy to her.

“Nap time, baby girl,” he said. She pouted at him, and he heard Jensen chuckle. “She hates to go down for a nap. She’s always afraid she’s going to miss something. Aren’t you, huh?” He stroked the fine hair back off her forehead.

She focused on Jensen and held the puppy out to him.

“That’s a nice puppy dog,” Jensen said. “What’s his name?”

She just stared at him a moment. She’d barely talked since Jensen arrived, but she’d been watching him. “Bo,” she said.

“Bo. That’s a nice name. Is he your best friend?” Jensen asked.

Again, she just looked at Jensen a moment before holding the stuffed animal out toward him. He didn’t take it from her, but leaned toward it. “Hello, Bo. Are you a friend of Mary’s?”

She stretched her arm out and let go. Jensen caught the toy before it hit his lap. “You want me to hold Bo for a little while?”

Her expression was serious as she watched him.

“Okay,” Jensen said. “But just for a little while, okay?” He held his arm aloft and made the little blue puppy glide toward her face until it just touched the tip of her nose. Her eyes got wide and she blinked. He did it again and smiled. The next time she laughed. The next time they were all laughing, and Mary yawned. Jensen stretched out beside her, and propped himself up on one elbow. Jared leaned back and watched Jensen run his fingers through the little girl’s curls.

“You know, I had a little sister a lot like you,” Jensen said quietly. “Her name was Ivy. Her hair was lighter, but she had a blue teddy bear when she was small. She loved him even when she got too old for teddy bears. He used to sit in the center of her bed. She still had him when …” Jensen bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut. Jared’s throat tightened. He leaned forward and stroked Jensen’s cheek.

“Jen,” he whispered.

Jensen’s eyes were wet with tears when he looked up. He sniffed but shook his head. “It’s okay.” Jensen laid down and rested his head on his arm. He smiled at the child beside him whose eyes had fallen shut. He tucked the blue puppy beneath her arm and stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. Within moments, he was asleep as well.

Jared swiped at his eyes. He looked over to the playground where he heard Rebekkah and Jacob bickering. Jacob was standing on the observation deck of a play fort, and Rebekkah was standing on the ground below with her hands on her hips. He couldn’t tell what they were saying, but Rebekkah clambered up the ladder to the fort and they both went down the slide before climbing up to do it again. Whatever the disagreement had been, they’d settled it. There were other kids on the playground, but they’d chosen to play together. He smiled.

Birds sang in the trees and insects buzzed off in the surrounding woods. Here beside Jared slept his baby and his man. He felt at peace for the first time in a long time. If there was hope for them, then Jared figured there was hope for his people, for a nation trying to learn a new way and accept new ideas. It had all started with them, him and Jensen, but the children would be the ones to carry it into the future. He knew now that they could. They were full of love and acceptance. It just needed to be nurtured.

**: : : :**

Jared reached above his head and grasped the headboard of their bed as the long line of his back arched off the bed. He pushed his head into the pillows and gasped when Jensen’s channel engulfed him. Jensen settled onto his hips. His knees bracketed Jared’s body. His eyes were dark and hooded and a smug smile curled his lips when Jared tried to buck beneath him.

“Feeling needy, dahsa?” Jensen growled. His thumb rubbed over the brand on Jared’s hip.

“Stop teasing, Jen. I swear one of these days …”

“What? What will you do?” Jensen’s hands slid over sweat slick skin of his ribs, and Jared’s hips were trying to roll beneath Jensen’s weight. Hungry eyes bored into his.

“I’m going to hold you down and fuck you till you can’t walk straight,” Jared said.

“I’m already bow-legged. That’s not much of a threat,” Jensen said with a grin. He rolled Jared’s nipples between his fingers. Jared bit his lip against the pain. They’d been pierced again just a few weeks earlier. “You want me to stop?”

“N, no.” He didn’t understand why the pain ratcheted up the arousal, but he felt as though his skin was too tight, his muscles bunched and tensed in a bizarre fight or flight kind of response. “Just fuck me. Come on, Jen. Fuck, I need …”

“What, dahsa? What do you need?”

“You! Fuck, I need you to move, take it, use me.” Jared was rolling his hips, his cock sliding inside Jensen and lifting them both off the bed. He knew he was hitting Jensen’s prostate when those long lashes fluttered and his lips parted on a moan. “Yeah, now move, Jen.”

On the next roll of Jared’s hips, Jensen moved with him like one great undulating beast. Jensen’s moan was long and low that time. His cock rubbed between them, slicking their skin with precome. The rolling and thrusting of their bodies became more frantic until the moan rose and fell like a wave crashing against Jared’s chest. His fingers bit into Jared’s arms as a hot fountain of come splashed between them.

Jared let go of the headboard and gripped Jensen’s buttocks as he braced his feet against the mattress and thrust hard and fast. He needed to be deeper still. Jensen was writhing against him and clinging to him.

“Yes, yeah, fuck, like that,” Jensen moaned.

Jared’s balls pulled up hard, and his body arched off the bed. His hips wanted to continue thrusting but his muscles had all seized. He pushed into Jensen, shooting seed deep into him. Jensen went limp on top of then as though in surrender. Jared lifted Jensen’s face in his hands and looked into dazed green eyes.

“Mine, Jen,” he panted. “You belong to me.”

Jensen gave him a self-satisfied smile. “Always did, dahsa.”

**_-30-_ **

  



End file.
